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WOMEN IN LOVE 


By D. H. LAWRENCE. 


THE Lost Giri y wae y ot tte hae atae A Novel 
AaRON’s RoD .. imran mie a Ui: 
ENGLAND, My ENGLAND . « esa. » Short Stones 
TORTOISES Sie oy SOaNmea Ad ; Poems 
SEA AND SARDINIA... a Book of Travel 
ToucH AND Go ea iat See at a (iol a ae ea 
THE WIDOWING OF Mrs. Hotzovp eo aes 


PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS. 
FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 


WOMEN IN LOVE 


BY 
D. H. LAWRENCE 


NEw YORK 
THOMAS SELTZER 
1922 


Copyright, 1920, 1922, by 
D. H. Lawrence 
All rights reserved 


First printing, October, 1922 
Second printing, October, 1922 


Third printing, December, 1922 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CONTENTS 


SISTERS 
SHORTLANDS 
Crass-Room 
DIvER . 


IN THE Th” 


CrEME DE MENTHE 
TOTEM 

BREADALBY 
Coat-Dust 
SKETCH-Booxk 

An IsLAND 
CARPETTING 

MINo . ; ; 
WATER-PARTY 
SUNDAY EVENING 
MAN TO Man . 
THE INDUSTRIAL Macnare 
RABBIT 

Moony 
GLADIATORIAL 
THRESHOLD 

WomMAN TO WoMAN 
EXCURSE 

DEATH AND LOVE 
MarRIAGE OR Not 
A CHatIR 

FLITTING j 
IN THE POMPADOUR 
CONTINENTAL 
SNOWED Up 

EXEUNT 


Bhd 94% 


ae 
ae ge) 


CHAPTER I 
SISTERS 


Ursuta and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the 
window-bay of their fatlier’s house in Beldover, working and 
talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured 
embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which 
she held on her knee. They were mosily silent, talking as 
their thoughts strayed through their minds. 

“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you really want to get mar- 
ried?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked 
up. Her face was calm and considerate. 

“T don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you mean.” 

Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister 
for some moments. 

“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! 
But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened 
slightly— “in a better position than you are in now?” 

A shadow came over Ursula’s face. 

“T might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.” 

Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to 
be quite definite. 

“You don’t think one needs the experience of having been 
married?” she asked. 

“Do you think it need be an experience?” replied Ursula. 

“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. 
“Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some 
sort.” 

“Not really,” said Ursula. ‘More likely to be the end of 
experience.” 

Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this. 

“Of course,” she said, “there’s that to consider.” This 

brought the conversation to a close. Gudrun, almost angrily, 
7 


8 WOMEN IN LOVE 


took up her rubber and began to rub out part of her drawing. 
Ursula stitched absorbedly. 

“You wouldn’t consider a good offer?” asked Gudrun. 

“T think I’ve rejected several,” said Ursula. 

“Really!” Gudrun flushed dark— “But ERO cy really 
worth while? Have you really?” 

“A thousand a year, and an awtully nice man. I liked 
him awfully,” said Ursula. 

“Really! But weren’t you fearfully tempted?” 

“In the abstract but not in the concrete,” said Ursula. 
“When it comes to the point, one isn’t even tempted—oh, 
if I were tempted, I’d marry like a shot. I’m only tempted 
not to.” The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with amuse- 
ment. 

“Isn’t it an amazing thing,” cried Gudrun, “how strong the 
temptation is, not to!” They both laughed, looking at each 
other. In their hearts they were frightened. 

There was a long pause, whilst Ursula stitched and Gudrun 
went on with her sketch. The sisters were women. Ursula 
twenty-six, and Gudrun twenty-five. But both had the remote, 
virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of 
Hebe. Gudrun was very beautiful, passive, soft-skinned, soft- 
limbed. She wore a dress of dark-blue silky stuff, with ruches 
of blue and green linen lace in the neck and sleeves and she 
had emerald-green stockings. Her look of confidence and 
diffidence contrasted with Ursula’s sensitive expectancy. The 
provincial people, intimidated by Gudrun’s perfect sang-froid 
and exclusive bareness of manner, said of her: “She is a smart 
woman.” She had just come back from London, where she 
had spent several years, working at an art-school, as a student, 
and living a studio life. 

“I was hoping ‘now for a man to come along,” Gudrun said, 
suddenly catching her underlip between her teeth, and making 
a strange grimace, half sly smiling, half anguish. Ursula was 
afraid. 

“So you have come home, expecting him here?” she laughed. 

“Oh my dear,” cried Gudrun, strident, “I wouldn’t go out 
of my way to look for him. But if there did happen to 


SISTERS 9 


come along a highly attractive individual of sufficient means— 
well—” she tailed off ironically. Then she looked searchingly 
at Ursula, as if to probe her. ‘Don’t you find yourself getting 
bored?” she asked of her sister. ‘Don’t you find, that things 
fail to materialize? Nothing materializes! Everything withers 
in the bud.” 

“What withers in the bud?” asked Ursula. 

“Oh, everything—oneself—things in general.” There was 
a pause, whilst each sister vaguely considered her fate. 

“Tt does frighten one,” said Ursula, and again there was 
a pause. “But do you hope to get anywhere by just mar- 
rying?” 

“Tt seems to be the inevitable next step,” said Gudrun. 
Ursula pondered this, with a little bitterness. She was a 
class mistress herself, in Willey Green Grammar School, as 
she had been for some years. 

“T know,” she said, “it seems like that when one thinks in 
the abstract. But really imagine it: imagine any man one 
knows, imagine him coming home to one every evening, and 
saying ‘Hello,’ and giving one a kiss—” 

There was a blank pause. 

“Ves,” said Gudrun, in a narrowed voice. “It’s just impos- 
sible. The man makes it impossible.” 

“Of course there’s children—” said Ursula doubtfully. 

Gudrun’s face hardened. 

“Do you really want children, Ursula?” she asked coldly. 
A dazzled, baffled look came on Ursula’s face. 

“One feels it is still beyond one,” she said. 

“Do you feel like that?” asked Gudrun. “I get no feeling 
whatever from the thought of bearing children.” 

Gudrun looked at Ursula with a mask-like, expressionless 
face. Ursula knitted her brows. 

“Perhaps it isn’t genuine,” she faltered. “Perhaps one 
doesn’t really want them, in one’s soul—only superficially.” 
A hardness came over Gudrun’s face. She did not want to 
be too definite. 

“When one thinks of other people’s children—” said Ursula. 

Again Gudrun looked at her sister, almost hostile. 


10 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Exactly,” she said, to close the conversation. 

The two sisters worked on in silence, Ursula having always 
that strange brightness of an essential flame that was caught, 
meshed, contravened. She lived a good deal by herself, to 
herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always 
thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it.in her own 
understanding. Her active living was suspended, but under- 
neath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only 
she could break through the last integuments! She seemed to 
try and put her hands out, like an infant in the womb, and 
she could not, not yet. Still she had a strange prescience, an 
intimation of something yet to come. 

She laid down her work, and looked at her sister. She 
thought Gudrun so charming, so infinitely charming, in her 
softness and her fine, exquisite richness of texture and delicacy 
of line. There was a certain playfulness about her too, such 
a piquancy or ironic suggestion, such an untouched reserve. 
Ursula admired her with all her soul. 

“Why did you come home, Prune?” she asked. 

Gudrun knew she was being admired. She sat back from 
her drawing and looked at Ursula, from under her finely- 
‘curved lashes. 

“Why did I come back, Ursula?” she repeated. “I have 
asked myself a thousand times.” 

“And don’t you know?” 

“Yes, I think I do. I think my coming back home was 
just veculer pour mieux sauter.” 

And she looked with a long, slow look of knowledge at 
Ursula. 

“I know!” cried Ursula, looking slightly dazzled and falsi- 
fied, and as if she did not know. ‘But where can one jump to?” 

“Oh, it. doesn’t matter,” said Gudrun, somewhat superbly. 
“If one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land some- 
where.” 

“But isn’t it very risky?” asked Ursula. 

A slow mocking smile dawned on Gudrun’s face. 

“Ah!” she said laughing. ‘What is it all but words!” 


SISTERS II 


And so again she closed the conversation. But Ursula was 
still brooding. 

“And how do you find home, now you have come back to 
it?” she asked. 

Gudrun paused for some moments, coldly, before answer- 
ing. Then, in a cold truthful voice, she said: 

“T find myself completely out of it.” 

“And father?” 

Gudrun looked at Ursula, almost with resentment, as if 
brought to bay. 

“T haven’t thought about him: I’ve refrained,” she said 
coldly. 

“Yes,” wavered Ursula, and the conversation was really 
at an end. The sisters found themselves confronted by a 
void, a terrifying chasm, as if they had looked over the edge. 

They worked on in silence for some time, Gudrun’s cheek 
was flushed with repressed emotion. She resented its having 
been called into being. 

“Shall we go out and look at that wedding?” she asked at 
length, in a voice that was too casual. 

“Yes!” cried Ursula, too eagerly, throwing aside her sewing 
and leaping up, as if to escape something, thus betraying. the 
tension of the situation and causing a friction of dislike to go 
over Gudrun’s nerves. . 

As she went upstairs, Ursula was aware of the house, of 
her home round about her. And she loathed it, the sordid, too- 
familiar place! She was afraid at the depth of her feeling 
against the home, the milieu, the whole atmosphere and con- 
dition of this obsolete life. Her feeling frightened her. 

The two girls were soon walking swiftly down the main 
road of Beldover, a wide street, part shops, part dwelling- 
houses, utterly formless and sordid, without poverty. Gudrun, 
new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrank cruelly from 
this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Mid- 
lands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut 
of pettiness, the long amorphous, gritty street. She was ex- 
posed to every stare, she passed on through a stretch of tor- 
ment. It was strange that she should have chosen to come 


12 WOMEN IN LOVE 


back and test the full effect of this shapeless, barren ugliness 
upon herself. Why had she wanted to submit herself to it, 
did she still want to submit herself to it, the insufferable 
torture of these ugly, meaningless people, this defaced country- 
side? She felt like a beetle toiling in the dust. She was filled 
with repulsion. 

They turned off the main road, past a black patch of 
common-garden, where sooty cabbage stumps stood shameless. 
No one thought to be ashamed. No one was ashamed of 
it all. 

“Tt is like a country in an underworld,” said Gudrun. “The 
colliers bring it above-ground with them, shovel it up. Ursula, 
it’s marvellous, it’s really marvellous—it? s really wonderful, 
another world. The people are all ghouls, and everything is 
ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica of the real world, 
a replica, a ghoul, all soiled, everything sordid. It’s like being 
mad, Ursula.” 

The sisters were crossing a black path through a dark, 
soiled field. On the left was a large landscape, a valley wath 
collieries, and opposite hills with cornfields and woods, all 
blackened with distance, as if seen through a veil of crape. 
White and black smoke rose up. in steady columns, magic 
within the dark air. Near at hand came the long rows of 
dwellings, approaching curved up the hill-slope, in straight 
lines along the brow of the hill. They were of darkened red 
brick, brittle, with dark slate roofs. The path on which the 
sisters walked was black, trodden-in by the feet of the recur- 
rent colliers, and bounded from the field by iron fences; the 
stile that led again into the road was rubbed shiny by the 
moleskins of the passing miners. Now the two girls were going 
between some rows of dwellings, of the poorer sort. Women, 
their arms folded over their coarse aprons, standing gossiping 
at the end of their block, stared after the Brangwen sisters 
with that long, unwearying stare of aborigines; children called 
out names. 

Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were human 
life, if these were human beings, living in a complete world, 
then what was her own world, outside? She was aware of her 


SISTERS 13 


grass-green stockings, her large grass-green velour hat, her 
full soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt as if she 
were treading in the air, quite unstable, her heart was con- 
tracted, as if at any minute she might be precipitated to the 
ground. She was afraid. 

She clung to Ursula, who, through long usage was inured 
to this violation of a dark, uncreated, hostile world.. But all 
the time her heart was crying, as if in the midst of some ordeal: 
“T want to go back, I want to go away, I want not. to know 
it, not to know that this exists.” Yet she must go forward. 

Ursula could feel her suffering. 

“You hate this, don’t you?” she asked. 

“Tt bewilders me,” stammered Gudrun. 

“You won’t stay long,’’ replied Ursula. 

And Gudrun went along, grasping at release. 

They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve 
of the hill, into the purer country of the other side, towards 
Willey Green. Still the faint glamour of blackness persisted 
over the fields and the wooded hills, and seemed darkly to 
gleam in the air. It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of 
sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge- 
bottoms, and in the cottage gardens of Willey Green, currant- 
bushes were breaking into leaf, and little flowers were coming 
white on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone walls. 

Turning, they passed down the high-road, that went between 
high banks towards the church. There, in the lowest bend 
of the road, low under the trees, stood a little group of expec- 
tant people, waiting to see the wedding. The daughter of the 
chief mine-owner of the district, Thomas Crich, was getting 
married to a naval officer. 

“Let us go back,” said Gudrun, swerving away. ‘There 
are all those people.” 

And she hung wavering in the road. 

“Never mind them,” said Ursula, “they’re all right. They 
all know me, they don’t matter.” 

“But must we go through them?” asked Gudrun. 

“They’re quite all right, really,” said Ursula, going forward. 
And together the two sisters approached the group of uneasy, 


14 WOMEN IN LOVE 


watchful common people. They were chiefly women, colliers’ 
wives of the more shiftless sort. They had watchful, under- 
world faces. 

The two sisters held themselves tense, and went straight 
towards the gate. The women made way for them, but barely 
sufficient, as if grudging to yield ground. The sisters passed 
in silence through the stone gateway and up the steps, on the 
red carpet, a policeman estimating their progress. 

“What price the stockings!” said a voice at the back of 
Gudrun. A sudden fierce anger swept over the girl, violent 
and murderous. She would have liked them all annihilated, 
cleared away, so that the world was left clear for her. How 
she hated walking up the churchyard path, along the red 
carpet, continuing in motion, in their sight. 

“T won’t go into the church,” she said suddenly, with such 
final decision that Ursula immediately halted, turned round, 
and branched off up a small side path which led to the little 
private gate of the Grammar School, whose grounds adjoined 
those of the church. 

Just inside the gate of the school shrubbery, outside the 
churchyard, Ursula sat down for a moment on the low stone 
wall under the laurel bushes, to rest. Behind her, the large 
red building of the school rose up peacefully, the windows all 
open for the holiday. Over the shrubs, before her, were the 
pale roofs and tower of the old church. The sisters were 
hidden by the foliage. 

Gudrun sat down in silence. Her mouth was shut close, 
her face averted. She was regretting bitterly that she had 
ever come back. Ursula looked at her, and thought how 
amazingly beautiful she was, flushed with discomfiture. But 
she caused a constraint over Ursula’s nature, a certain weari- 
ness. Ursula wished to be alone, freed from the tightness, 
the enclosure of Gudrun’s presence. 

“Are we going to stay here?” asked Gudrun. 

“I was only resting a minute,” said Ursula, getting up as 
if rebuked. “We will stand in the corner by the fives-court, 
we shall see everything from there.” 

For the moment, the sunshine fell brightly into the church: 


SISTERS 15 


yard, there was a vague scent of sap and of spring, perhaps 
of violets from off the graves. Some white daisies were out, 
bright as angels. In the air, the unfolding leaves of a copper- 
beech were blood-red. 

Punctually at eleven o’clock, the carriages began to arrive. 
There was a stir in the crowd at the gate, a concentration as 
a carriage drove up, wedding guests were mounting up the 
steps and passing along the red carpet to the church. They 
were all gay and excited because the sun was shining. _ 

Gudrun watched them closely, with objective curiosity. She 
saw each one as a complete figure, like a character in a book, 
or a subject in a picture, or a marionette in a theatre, a finished 
creation. She loved to recognise their various characteristics, 
to place them in their true light, give them their own sur- 
roundings, settle them for ever as they passed before her along 
the path to the church. She knew them, they were finished, 
sealed and stamped and finished with, for her. There was 
none that had anything unknown, unresolved, until the Criches 
themselves began to appear. Then her interest was piqued. 
Here was something not quite so preconcluded. 

There came the mother, Mrs. Crich, with her eldest son 
Gerald. She was a queer unkempt figure, in spite of the 
attempts that had obviously been made to bring her into line 
for the day. Her face was pale, yellowish, with a clear, trans- 
parent skin, she leaned forward rather, her features were 
strongly marked, handsome, with a tense, unseeing predative 
look. Her colourless hair was untidy, wisps floating down on 
to her sac coat of dark blue silk, from under her blue silk 
hat. She looked like a woman with a monomania, furtive 
almost, but heavily proud. 

Her son was of a fair, sun-tanned type, rather above middle 
height, well-made, and almost exaggeratedly well-dressed. But 
about him also was the strange, guarded look, the unconscious 
glisten, as if he did not belong to the same creation as the 
people about him. Gudrun lighted on him at once. There 
was something northern about him that magnetised her. In 
his clear northern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like sun- 
shine refracted through crystals of ice. And he looked so 


16 WOMEN IN LOVE 


new, unbroached, pure as an arctic thing. Perhaps he was 
thirty years old, perhaps more. His gleaming beauty, male- 
ness, like a young, good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind 
her to the significant, sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurk- 
ing danger of his unsubdued temper. ‘His totem is the wolf,” 
she repeated to herself. “His mother is an old, unbroken 
wolf.” And then she experienced a keen paroxysm, a trans- 
port, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known to 
nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of 
her, all her veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. 
“Good God!” she exclaimed to herself, “what is this?” And 
then, a moment after, she was saying assuredly, “I shall know 
more of that man.” She was tortured with desire to see him 
again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again, to make sure 
it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding herself, 
that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation 
on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this 
powerful apprehension of him. “Am I really singled out for 
him in some way, is there really some pale gold, arctic light 
that envelopes only us two?’ she asked herself. And she 
could not believe it, she remained in a muse, scarcely conscious 
of what was going on around. 

The bridesmaids were here, and yet the bridegroom had not 
come. Ursula wondered if something was amiss, and if the 
wedding would yet all go wrong. She felt troubled, as if it 
rested upon her. The chief bridesmaids had arrived. Ursula 
watched them come up the steps. One of them she knew, a 
tall, slow, reluctant woman with a weight of fair hair and a 
pale, long face. This was Hermione Roddice, a friend of the 
Criches. Now she came along, with her head held up, bal- 
ancing an enormous flat hat of pale yellow velvet, on which 
were streaks of ostrich feathers, natural and grey. She drifted 
forward as if scarcely conscious, her long blanched face lifted 
up, not to see the world. She was rich. She wore a dress 
of silky, frail velvet, of pale yellow colour, and she carried a 
lot of small rose-coloured cyclamens. Her shoes and stockings 
were of brownish grey, like the feathers on her hat, her hair 
was heavy, she drifted along with a peculiar fixity of the hips, 


SISTERS 17 


a strange unwilling motion. She was impressive, in her lovely 
pale-yellow and brownish-rose, yet macabre, something repul- 
sive. People were silent when she passed, impressed, roused, 
wanting to jeer, yet for some reason silenced. Her long, pale 
face, that she carried lifted up, somewhat in the Rossetti 
fashion, seemed almost drugged, as if a strange mass of 
thoughts coiled in the darkness within her, and she was never 
allowed to escape. 

Ursula watched her with fascination. She knew her a 
little. She was the most remarkable woman in the Midlands. 
Her father was a Derbyshire Baronet of the old school, she 
was a woman of the new school, full of intellectuality, and 
heavy, nerve-worn with consciousness. She was passionately 
interested in reform, her soul was given up to the public cause. 
But she was a man’s woman, it was the manly world that 
held her. 

She had various intimacies of mind and soul with various 
men of capacity. Ursula knew, among these men, only Rupert 
Birkin, who was one of the school-inspectors of the county. 
But Gudrun had met others, in London. Moving with her 
artist friends in different kinds of society, Gudrun had already 
come to know a good many people of repute and standing. 
She had met Hermione twice, but they did not take to each 
other. It would be queer to meet again down here in the Mid- 
lands, where their social standing was so diverse, after they 
had known each other on terms of equality in the houses of 
sundry acquaintances in town. For Gudrun had been a social 
success, and had her friends among the slack aristocracy that 
keeps touch with the arts. 

Hermione knew herself to be well-dressed; she knew herself 
to be the social equal, if not far the superior, of anyone she 
was likely to meet in Willey Green. She knew she was 
accepted in the world of culture and of intellect. She was a 
Kulturtriger, a medium for the culture of ideas. With all 
that was highest, whether in society or in thought or in public 
action, or even in art, she was at one, she moved among the 
foremost, at home with them. No one could put her down, 
no one could make mock of her, because she stood among the 


18 WOMEN IN LOVE 


first, and those that were against her were below her, either 
in rank, or in wealth, or in high association of thought and 
progress and understanding. So, she was invulnerable. Ali 
her life, she had sought to make herself invulnerable, unassail- 
able, beyond reach of the world’s judgment. 

And yet her soul was tortured, exposed. Even walking up 
the path to the church, confident as she was that in every 
respect she stood beyond all vulgar judgment, knowing per- 
fectly that her appearance was complete and perfect, accord- 
ing to the first standards, yet she suffered a torture, under 
her confidence and her pride, feeling herself exposed to wounds 
and to mockery and to despite. She always felt vulnerable, 
vulnerable, there was always a secret chink in her armour. 
She did not know herself what it was. It was a lack of robust 
self, she had no natural sufficiency, there was a terrible void, 
a lack, a deficiency of being within her. 

And she wanted someone to close up this deficiency, to 
close it up for ever. She craved for Rupert Birkin. When he 
was there, she felt complete, she was sufficient, whole. For 
the rest of time she was established on the sand, built over 
a chasm, and, in spite of all her vanity and securities, any 
common maid-servant of positive, robust temper could fling 
her down this bottomless pit of insufficiency, by the slightest 
movement of jeering or contempt. And all the while the 
pensive, tortured woman piled up her own defences of zsthetic 
knowledge, and culture, and world-visions, and disinterested- 
ness. Yet she could never stop up the terrible gap of insuf- 
ficiency. 

If only Birkin would form a close and abiding connection 
with her, she would be safe during this fretful voyage of life. 
He could make her sound and triumphant, triumphant over 
the very angels of heaven. If only he would do it! But she 
was tortured with fear, with misgiving. She made herself 
beautiful, she strove so hard to come to that degree of beauty 
and advantage, when he should be convinced. But always 
there was a deficiency. 

He was perverse too. He fought her off, he always fought 
her off. The more she strove to bring him to her, the more 


SISTERS | 19 


he battled her back. And they had been lovers now, for years. 
Oh, it was so wearying, so aching; she was so tired. But 
still she believed in herself. She knew he was trying to leave 
her. She knew he was trying to break away from her finally, 
to be free. But still she believed in her strength to keep him, 
she believed in her own higher knowledge. His own knowledge 
was high, she was the central touchstone of truth. She only 
needed his conjunction with her. 

And this, this conjunction with her, which was his highest 
fulfilment also, with the perverseness of a wilful child he 
wanted to deny. With the wilfulness of an obstinate child, he 
wanted to break the holy connection that was between them. 

He would be at this wedding; he was to be groom’s man. 
He would be in the church, waiting. He would know when 
she came. She shuddered with nervous apprehension and 
desire as she went through the church-door. He would be 
there, surely he would see how beautiful her dress was, surely 
he would see how she had made herself beautiful for him. He 
would understand, he would be able to see how she was made 
for him, the first, how she was, for him, the highest. Surely 
at last he would be able to accept his highest fate, he would 
not deny her. 

In a little convulsion of too-tired yearning, she entered the 
church and looked slowly along her cheeks for him, her slender 
body convulsed with agitation. As best man, he would be 
standing beside the altar. She looked slowly, deferring in her 
certainty. 

And then, he was not there. A terrible storm came over 
her, as if she were drowning. She was possessed by a devas- 
tating hopelessness. And she approached mechanically to the 
altar. Never had she known such a pang of utter and final 
hopelessness. It was beyond death, so utterly null, desert. 

The bridegroom and the groom’s man had not yet come. 
There was a growing consternation outside. Ursula felt almost 
responsible. She could not bear it that the bride should arrive, 
and no groom. The wedding must not be a fiasco, it must not. 

But here was the bride’s carriage, adorned with ribbons 
and cockades. Gaily the grey horses curvetted to their desti- 


20 WOMEN IN LOVE 


nation at the church-gaie, a laughter in the whole movement. 
Here was the quick of all laughter and pleasure. The door 
of the carriage was thrown open, to let out the very blossom 
of the day. The people on the roadway murmured faintly 
with the discontented murmuring of a crowd. 

The father stepped out first into the air of the morning, 
like a shadow. He te, a tall, thin, care-worn man, with a 
thin black beard that was touched with grey. He waited at 
the door of the carriage patiently, self-obliterated. 

In the opening of the doorway was a shower of fine foliage 
and flowers, a whiteness of satin and lace, and a sound of a 
gay. voice saying: 

“How do I get out?” 

A ripple of satisfaction ran through eee iapdelais people. 
They pressed near to receive her, looking with zest at the 
stooping blond head with its flower buds, and at the delicate, 
white, tentative foot that was reaching down to the step of 
the carriage. There was a sudden foaming rush, and the bride 
like a sudden surf-rush, floating all white beside her father 
in the morning shadow of trees, her veil flowing with laughter. 

“‘That’s done it!” she said. 

She put her hand on the arm of her care-worn, sallow father, 
and frothing her light draperies, proceeded over the eternal 
red carpet. Her father, mute and yellowish, his black beard 
making him look more care-worn, mounted the steps stiffly, as 
if his spirit were absent; but the laughing mist of the bride 
went along with him undiminished. 

And no bridegroom had arrived! It was intolerable for 
her. Ursula, her heart strained with anxiety, was watching 
the hill beyond; the white, descending road, that should give 
sight of him. There was a carriage. It was running. It had 
just come into sight. Yes, it was he. Ursula turned towards. 
the bride and the people, and, from her place of vantage, gave 
an inarticulate cry. She wanted to warn them that he was 
coming. But her cry was inarticulate and inaudible, and she 
flushed deeply, between her desire and her wincing confusion. 

The carriage rattled down the hill, and drew near. There 
was a shout from the people. The bride, who had just reached 


SISTERS 21 


the top of the steps, turned round gaily to see what was the 
commotion. She saw a confusion among the people, a cab 
pulling up, and her lover dropping out of the carriage, and 
dodging among the horses and into the crowd. 

“Tibs! Tibs!” she cried in her sudden, mocking excitement, 
standing high on the path in the sunlight and waving her 
bouquet. He, dodging with his hat in his hand, had not 
heard. 

“Tibs!” she cried again, looking down to him. 

He glanced up, unaware, and saw the bride and her father 
standing on the path above him. A queer, startled look went 
over his face. He hesitated for a moment. Then he gathered 
himself together for a leap, to overtake her. 

““Ah-h-h!” came her strange, intaken-cry, as, on the reflex, 
she started, turned and fled, scudding with an unthinkable 
swift beating of her white feet and fraying of her white gar- 
ments, towards the church. Like a hound the young man 
was after her, leaping the steps and swinging past her father, 
his supple haunches working like those of a hound that bears 
down on the quarry. 

“Ay, after her!” cried the vulgar women below, carried 
suddenly into the sport. 

She, her flowers shaken from her like froth, was steadying 
herself to turn the angle of the church. She glanced behind, 
and with a wild cry of Iaughter and challenge, veered, poised, 
and was gone beyond the grey stone buttress. In another 
instant the bridegroom, bent forward as he ran, had caught 
the angle of the silent stone with his hand, and had swung 
himself out of sight, his supple, strong loins vanishing in 
pursuit. 

Instantly cries and exclamations of excitement burst from 
the crowd at the gate. And then Ursula noticed again the 
dark, rather stooping figure of Mr. Crich, waiting suspended 
on the path, watching with expressionless face the flight to the 
church. It was over, and he turned round to look behind him, 
at the figure of Rupert Birkin, who at once came forward and 
joined him. 


22 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“We'll bring up the rear,” said Birkin, a faint smile on 
his face. 

“Ay!” replied the father laconically. And the two men 
turned together up the path. 

Birkin was as thin as Mr. Crich, pale and ill-looking. His 
figure was narrow but nicely made. He went with a slight 
trail of one foot, which came only from self-consciousness. 
Although he was dressed correctly for his part, yet there was 
an innate incongruity which caused a slight ridiculousness in 
his appearance. His nature was clever and separate, he did 
not fit at all in the conventional occasion. Yet he subordi- 
nated himself to the common idea, travestied himself. 

He affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly and marvellously 
commonplace. And he did it so well, taking the tone of his 
surroundings, adjusting himself quickly to his interlocutor 
and his circumstance, that he achieved a verisimilitude of 
ordinary commonplaceness that usually propitiated his onlook- 
ers for the moment, disarmed them from attacking his single- 
ness. 

Now he spoke quite easily and pleasantly to Mr. Crich, as 
they walked along the path; he played with situations like a 
man on a tight-rope: but always on a tight-rope, pretending 
nothing but ease. 

“I’m sorry we are so late,” he was saying. ‘We couldn’t — 
find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our 
boots. But you were to the moment.” 

“We are usually to time,” said Mr. Crich. 

“And I’m always late,” said Birkin. “But to-day I was 
really punctual, only accidently not so. I’m sorry.” 

The two men were gone, there was nothing more to see, 
for the time. Ursula was left thinking about Birkin. He 
piqued her, attracted her, and annoyed her. 

She wanted to know him more. She had spoken with him 
once or twice, but only in his official capacity as inspector. 
She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between 
her and him, a natural, tacit understanding, a using of the 
same language. But there had been no time for the under- 
standing to develop. And something kept her from him, as 


SISTERS 23 


well as attracted her to him. There was a certain hostility, a 
hidden ultimate reserve in him, cold and inaccessible. 

Yet she wanted to know him. 

“What do you think of Rupert Birkin?” she asked, a little 
reluctantly, of Gudrun. She did not want to discuss him. 

“What do I think of Rupert Birkin?” repeated Gudrun. 
“T think he’s attractive—decidedly attractive. What I can’t 
stand about him is his way with other people—his way of 
treating any little fool as if she were his greatest consideration. 
One feels so awfully sold, oneself.” 

“Why does he do it?” said Ursula. 

“Because he has no real critical faculty—of people, at all 
events,” said Gudrun. “TI tell you, he treats any little fool 
as he treats me or you—and it’s such an insult.” 

“Oh, it is,” said Ursula. ‘One must discriminate.” 

“One must discriminate,” repeated Gudrun. “But he’s a 
wonderful chap, in other respects—a marvellous personality. 
But you can’t trust him.” 

“Yes,” said Ursula vaguely. She was always forced to 
assent to Gudrun’s pronouncements, even when she was not 
in accord altogether. 

The sisters sat silent, waiting for the wedding party to come 
out. Gudrun was impatient of talk. She wanted to think 
about Gerald Crich. She wanted to see if the strong feeling 
she had got from him was real. She wanted to have herself 
ready. 

Inside the church, the wedding was going on. Hermione 
Roddice was thinking only of Birkin. He stood near her. 
She seemed to gravitate physically towards him. She wanted 
to stand touching him. She could hardly be sure he was near 
her, if she did not touch him. Yet she stood subjected througi: 
the wedding service. 

She had suffered so bitterly when he did not come, that still 
‘she was dazed. Still she was gnawed as by a neuralgia, tor- 
‘mented by his potential absence from her. She had awaited 
him in a faint delirium of nervous torture. As she stood 
bearing herself pensively, the rapt look on her face, that 
seemed spiritual, like the angels, but which came from torture, 


24 WOMEN IN LOVE 


gave her a certain poignancy that tore his heart with pity. 
He saw her bowed head, her rapt face, the face of an almost 
demoniacal ecstatic. Feeling him looking, she lifted her face 
and sought his eyes, her own beautiful grey eyes flaring him 
a great signal. But he avoided her look, she sank her head 
in torment and shame, the gnawing at her heart going on. 
And he too was tortured with shame, and ultimate dislike, and 
with acute pity for her, because he did not want to meet her 
eyes, he did not want to receive her flare of recognition. 

The bride and bridegroom were married, the party went 
into the vestry. Hermione crowded involuntarily up against 
Birkin, to touch him. And he endured it. 

Outside, Gudrun and Ursula listened for their father’s play- 
ing on the organ. He would enjoy playing a wedding march. 
Now the married pair were coming! The bells were ringing, 
making the air shake. Ursula wondered if the trees and the 
flowers could feel the vibration, and what they thought of it, 
this strange motion in the air. The bride was quite demure 
on the arm of the bridegroom, who stared up into the sky 
before him, shutting and opening his eyes unconsciously, as 
if he were neither here nor there. He looked rather comical, 
blinking and trying to be in the scene, when emotionally he 
was violated by his exposure to a crowd. He looked a typical 
naval officer, manly, and up to his duty. 

Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant 
look, like the fallen angels restored, yet still subtly demoniacal, 
now she held Birkin by the arm. And he was expressionless, 
neutralised, possessed by her as if it were his fate, without 
question. 

Gerald Crich came, fair, goodlooking, healthy, with a great 
reserve of energy. He was erect and complete, there was a 
strange stealth glistening through his amiable, almost happy 
appearance. Gudrun rose sharply and went away. She could 
not bear it. She wanted to be alone, to know this strange, 
sharp inoculation that had changed the whole tomer of her: 
blood. 


CHAPTER II 
SHORTLANDS 


Tue Brangwens went home to Beldover, the wedding-party 
gathered at Shortlands, the Criches’ home. It was a long, low 
old house, a sort of manor farm, that spread along the top 
of a slope just beyond the narrow little lake of Willey Water. 
Shortlands looked across a sloping meadow that might be a 
park, because of the large, solitary trees that stood here and 
there, across the water of the narrow lake, at the wooded hill 
that successfully hid the colliery valley beyond, but did not 
quite hide the rising smoke. Nevertheless, the scene was rural 
and picturesque, very peaceful, and the house had a charm of 
its own. 

It was crowded now with the family and the wedding guests. 
The father, who was not well, withdrew to rest. Gerald was 
host. He stood in the homely entrance hall, friendly and easy, 
attending to the men. He seemed to take pleasure in his social 
functions, he smiled, and was abundant in hospitality. 

The women wandered about in a little confusion, chased 
hither and thither by the three married daughters of the 
house. All the while there could be heard the characteristic, 
imperious voice of one Crich woman or another calling, “Helen, 
come here a minute,” “Marjory, I want you—here.” “Oh, I 
say, Mrs. Witham—” There was a great rustling of skirts, 
swift glimpses of smartly-dressed women, a child danced 
through the hall and back again, a maid-servant came and 
went hurriedly. 

Meanwhile the men stood in calm little groups, chatting, 
smoking, pretending to pay no heed to the rustling animation 
of the women’s world. But they could not really talk, because 
of the glassy ravel of women’s excited, cold laughter and run- 
ning voices. They waited, uneasy, suspended, rather bored. 

25 


26 WOMEN IN LOVE 


But Gerald remained as if genial and happy, unaware that he 
was waiting or unoccupied, knowing himself the very pivot 
of the occasion. 

Suddenly Mrs. Crich came noiselessly into the room, peer- 
ing about with her strong, clear face. She was still wearing 
her hat, and her sac coat of blue silk. 

“What is it, mother?” said Gerald. 

“Nothing, nothing!” she answered vaguely. And she went 
straight towards Birkin, who was talking to a Crich brother- 
in-law. 

“How do you do, Mr. Birkin,” she said, in her low voice, 
that seemed to take no count of her guests. She held out her 
hand to him. 

“Oh, Mrs. Crich,” replied Birkin, in his readily-changing 
voice, “T couldn’t come to you before. ns 

“J don’t know half the people here,” she said, in her low 
voice. Her son-in-law moved uneasily away. 

“And you don’t like strangers?” laughed Birkin. “I myself 
can never see why one should take account of people, just 
because they happen to be in the room with one: why should 
I know they are there?” 

“Why indeed, why indeed!” said Mrs. Crich, in her low, 
tense voice. “Except that they are there. J don’t know 
people whom I find in the house. The children introduce them 
to me—‘Mother, this is Mr. So-and-so.’ I am no further. 
What has Mr. So-and-so to do with his own name?—and what 
have I to do with either him or his name?” 

She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was flat- 
tered too that she came to talk to him, for she took hardly 
any notice of anybody. He looked down at her tense clear 
face, with its heavy features, but he was afraid to look into 
her heavy-seeing blue eyes. He noticed instead how her hair 
looped in slack, slovenly strands over her rather beautiful ears, 
which were not quite clean. Neither was her neck perfectly 
clean. Even in that he seemed to belong to her, rather than 
to the rest of the company; though, he thought to himself, 
he was always well-washed, at any rate at the neck and ears. 

He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was tense, 


SHORTLANDS 27 


feeling that he and the elderly, estranged woman were con- 
ferring together like traitors, like enemies within the camp of 
the other people. He resembled a deex, that throws one ear 
back upon the trail behind. and one ear forward, to know 
what is ahead. 

“People don’t really matter,” he said, rather unwilling to 
continue. | 

The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interroga- 
tion, as if doubting his sincerity. 

“How do you mean, matter?” she asked sharply. 

“Not many people are anything at all,”’ he answered, forced 
to go deeper than he wanted to. “They jingle and giggle. It 
would be much better if they were just wiped out. Essentially, 
they don’t exist, they aren’t there.” 

She watched him steadily while he spoke. 

“But we don’t imagine them,” she said sharply. 

“There’s nothing to imagine, that’s why they don’t exist.” 

“Well,” she said, “I would hardly go as far as that. There 
they are, whether they exist or no. It doesn’t rest with me 
to decide on their existence. I only know that I can’t be 
expected to take count of them all. You can’t expect me to 
know them, just because they happen to be there. As far as J 
go they might as well not be there.” 

“Exactly,” he replied. 

“Mightn’t they?” she asked again. 

“Just as well,” he repeated. And there was a little pause. 

“Except that they are there, and that’s a nuisance,” she 
said. “There are my sons-in-law,” she went on, in a sort of 
monologue. ‘Now Laura’s got married, there’s another. And 
I really don’t know John from James yet. They come up to 
me and call me mother. I know what they will say— ‘How 
‘ are you, mother?’ I ought to say, ‘I am not your mother, in 
any sense.’ But what is the use? There they are. I have 
had children of my own. I suppose I know them from another 
woman’s children.” 

“One would suppose so,” he said. 

She looked at him, somewhat surprised, forgetting perhaps 
that she was talking to him. And she lost her thread. 


28 WOMEN IN LOVE 


She looked round the room, vaguely. Birkin could not guess 
what she was looking for, nor what she was papragint Evi- 
dently she noticed her sons. 

“Are my children all there?” she asked him abruptly. 

He laughed, startled, afraid perhaps. 

“I scarcely know dha: except Gerald,” he replied. 

“Gerald!” she exclaimed. ‘‘He’s the most missing of them 
all. You’d never think it, to look at him now, , would your” 

“No,” said Birkin. 

The mother looked across at her eldest son, stared at him 
heavily for some time. 

“Ay,” she said, in an incomprehensible monosyllable, that 
sounded profoundly cynical. Birkin felt afraid, as if he 
dared not realise. And Mrs. Crich moved away, forgetting him. 
But she returned on her traces. 

“J should like him to have a friend,” she said. “He has 
never had a friend.” 

Birkin looked down into her eyes, which were blue, and 
watching heavily. He could not understand them. “Am I 
my brother’s keeper?” he said to himself, almost flippantly. 

Then he remembered, with a slight shock, that that was 
Cain’s cry. And Gerald was Cain, if anybody. Not that he 
was Cain, either, although he had slain his brother. There 
was such a thing as pure accident, and the consequences did 
not attach to one, even though one had killed one’s brother in 
such wise. Gerald as a boy had accidentally killed his 
brother. What then? Why seek to draw a brand and a curse 
across the life that had caused the accident? A man can live 
by accident, and die by accident. Or can he not? Is every 
man’s life subject to pure accident, is it only the race, the 
genus, the species, that has a universal reference? Or is this 
not true, is there no such thing as pure accident? Has every- 
thing that happens a universal significance? Has it? Birkin, 
pondering as he stood there, had forgotten Mrs. Crich, as 
she had forgotten him. 

He did not believe that there was any such thing as acci- 
dent. It all hung together, in the deepest sense. 


SHORTLANDS 29 


Just as he had decided this, one of the Crich daughters 
came up, saying: 

“Won’t you come and take your hat off, mother dear? We 
shall be sitting down to eat in a minute, and it’s a formal 
occasion, darling, isn’t it?” She drew her arm through her 
mother’s, and they went away. Birkin immediately went to 
talk with the nearest man. 

The gong sounded for the luncheon. The men looked up, 
but no move was made to the dining-room. The women of 
the house seemed not to feel that the sound had meaning for 
them. Five minutes passed by. The elderly man-servant, 
Crowther, appeared in the doorway exasperatedly. He looked 
with appeal at Gerald. The latter took up a large, curved 
conch shell, that lay on a shelf, and without reference to any- 
body, blew a shattering blast. It was a strange rousing noise, 
that made the heart beat.. The summons was almost magical. 
Everybody came running, as if at a signal. And then the crowd 
in one impulse moved to the dining-room. 

Gerald waited a moment, for his sister to play hostess. He 
knew his mother would pay no attention to her duties. But 
his sister merely crowded to her seat. Therefore the young 
man, slightly too dictatorial, directed the guests to their places. 

There was a moment’s lull, as everybody looked at the hors 
d’oeuvres that were being handed round. And out of this 
lull, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with her long hair down her 
back, said in a calm, self-possessed voice: 

“Gerald, you forget father, when you make that unearthly 
noise.” 

“Do I?” he answered. And then, to the company, “Father 
is lying down, he is not quite well. ” 

“How is he, really?” called one of the married daughters, 
peeping round the immense wedding cake that towered up in 
the middle of the table shedding its artificial flowers. 

“He has no pain, but he feels tired,” replied Winifred, the 
girl with the hair down her back. 

The wine was filled, and everybody was talking boister- 
ously. At the far end of the table sat the mother, with her 
loosely-looped hair. She had Birkin for a neighbour. Some- 


30 WOMEN IN LOVE 


times she glanced fiercely down the rows of faces, bending 
forwards and staring unceremoniously. And she would say 
in a low voice to Birkin: 

“Who is that young man?” 

“Tt don’t know,” Birkin answered discreetly. 

“Have I seen him before?” she asked. 

“TJ don’t think so. J haven’t,” he replied. And she was 
satisfied. Her eyes closed wearily, a peace came over her 
face, she looked like a queen in repose.. Then she started, a 
little social smile came on her face, for a moment she looked 
the pleasant hostess. For a moment she bent graciously, as 
if everyone were welcome and delightful. And then imme- 
diately the shadow came back, a sullen, eagle look was on her 
face, she glanced from under her brows like a sinister creature 
at bay, hating them all. 

“Mother,” called Diana, a handsome girl a little older than 
Winifred, “I may have wine, mayn’t I?” 

“Yes, you may have wine,” replied the mother automatically, 
for she was perfectly indifferent to the question. 

And Diana beckoned to the footman to fill her glass. 

“Gerald shouldn’t forbid me,” she said calmly, to the com- 
pany at large. 

“All right, Di,” said her brother amiably. And she glanced 
challenge at him as she drank from her glass. 

There was a strange freedom, that almost amounted to 
anarchy, in the house.. It was rather a resistance to authority, 
than liberty. Gerald had some command, by mere force of 
personality, not because of any granted position. There was 
a quality in his voice, amiable but dominant, that cowed the 
others, who were all younger than he. | 

Hermione was having a discussion with the bridegroom about 
nationality. 

“No,” she said, “I think that the appeal to patriotism is a 
mistake. It is like one house of business rivalling another 
house of business.” 

“Well you can hardly say that, can you?” exclaimed Ger- 
ald, who had a real passion for discussion. ‘You couldn’t call 


SHORTLANDS 31 


a race a business concern, could you?—and nationality roughly 
corresponds to race, I think. I think it is meant to.” 

There was a moment’s pause. Gerald and Hermione were 
always strangely but politely and evenly inimical. 

“Do you think race corresponds with nationality?” s 

asked musingly with expressionless indecision. 

Birkin knew she was waiting for him to participate. And 
dutifully he spoke up. 

“T think Gerald is right—race is the essential element in 
nationality in Europe at least,” he said. 

Again Hermione paused, as if to allow this statement to 
cool. Then she said with strange assumption of authority: 

“Ves, but even so, is the patriotic appeal an appeal to the 
racial instinct? Is it not rather an appeal to the proprietory 
instinct, the commercial instinct? And isn’t this what we mean 
by nationality?’ ; 

“Probably,” said Birkin, who felt that such a discussion 
was out of place and out of time. | 

But Gerald was now on the scent of argument. 

“A race may have its commercial aspect,” he said. “In 
fact it must. It is like a family. You must make provision. 
And to make provision you have got to strive against other 
families, other nations. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.” 

Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before 
she replied: “Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a 
spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad blood accu- 
mulates.” 

“But you can’t do away with the spirit of emulation alto- 
gether?” said Gerald. ‘It is one of the necessary incentives 
to production and improvement.” 

“Yes,” came Hermione’s sauntering response. “I think you 
can do away with it.” 

“I must say,” said Birkin, “I detest the spirit of emula- 
tion.” Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from 
beneath her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly, derisive 
movement. She turned to Birkin. 

“You do hate it, yes,” she said, intimate and gratified. 

“Detest it,” he repeated. 


32 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Yes,” she murmured, assured and satisfied. 

“But,” Gerald insisted, “you don’t allow one man to take 
away his neighbour’s living, so why should you allow one 
nation to take away the living from another nation?” 

There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she 
broke into speech, saying with a laconic indifference: 

“Tt is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not 
all a question of goods?” 

Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar mate- 
rialism. 

“Ves, more or less,” he retorted. “If I go and take a man’s 
hat from off his head,. that hat becomes a symbol of that 
man’s liberty. When he bent me for his hat, he is fighting 
me for his liberty.” 

Hermione was nonplussed. 

“Ves,” she said, irritated. “But that way of arguing by 
imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A 
man does mot come and take my hat from off my head, 
does he?” 

“Only because the law csi him,” said Gerald. 

“Not only,” said Birkin. ‘Ninety-nine men out of a hun- 
dred don’t want my hat.” 

“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Gerald. 

“Or the hat,” laughed the bridegroom. 

“And if he does want my hat, such as it is,” said Birkin, 
“why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater 
loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man. 
If I am compelled to offer fight, I lose the latter. It is a ques- 
tion which is worth more to me, my pleasant liberty of con- 
duct, or my hat.” 

“Yes, ” said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. “Yes” 

“But would you let somebody come and snatch your hat 
off your head?” the bride asked of Hermione. 

The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and as 
if drugged to this new speaker. 

“No,” she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed to 
contain a chuckle. “No, I shouldn’t let anyone take my hat 
off my head.” 


SHORTLANDS 33 


“How would you prevent it?” asked Gerald. 

“JT don’t know,” replied Hermione slowly. “Probably I 
should kill him.” 

There was a strange chuckle in her tone, a dangerous and 
convincing humour in her bearing. _ 

“Of course,” said Gerald, “I can see Rupert’s point. It is 
a question to him whether his hat or his peace of mind is 
more important.” 

“Peace of body,” said Birkin. 

“Well, as you like there,” replied Gerald. “But bow are you 
going to decide this for a nation?” * 

“Heaven preserve me,” laughed Birkin. 

“Yes, but suppose you have to?” Gerald persisted. 

“Then it is the same. If the national crown-piece is an old 
hat, then the thieving gent may have it.” 

“But ca#z the national or racial hat be an old hat?” insisted 
Gerald. 

“Pretty well bound to be, I believe,” said Birkin. 

“T’m not so sure,” said Gerald. 

“T don’t agree, Rupert,” said Hermione. 

“All right,” said Birkin. 

“I’m all for the old national hat,” laughed Gerald. 

“And a fool you look in it,” cried Diana, his pert sister who 
was just in her teens. 

“Oh, we’re quite out of our depths with these old hats,” 
cried Laura Crich. “Dry up now, Gerald. We’re going to 
drink toasts. Let us drink toasts. Toasts—glasses, glasses 
—now then, toasts! Speech! Speech!” | 

Birkin, thinking about race or national death, watched his 
glass being filled with champagne. ‘The bubbles broke at the 
rim, the man withdrew, and feeling a sudden thirst at the 
sight of the fresh wine, Birkin drank up his glass. A queer 
little tension in the room roused him. He felt a sharp 
constraint. 

“Did I do it by accident, or on purpose?” he asked himself. 
And he decided that, according to the vulgar phrase, he had 
done it “accidentally on purpose.” He looked round at the 
hired footman. And the hired footman came, with a silent 


34 WOMEN IN LOVE 


step of cold servant-like disapprobation. Birkin decided that 
he detested toasts, and footmen, and assemblies, and mankind 
altogether, in most of its aspects. Then he rose to make a 
speech. But he was somchow disgusted. 

At length it was over, the meal. Several men strolled out © 
into the garden. There was a lawn, and flower-beds, and at 
the boundary an iron fence shutting off the little field or 
park. The view was pleasant; a highroad curving round the 
edge of a low lake, under the trees. In the spring air, the 
water gleamed and the opposite woods were purplish with new 
life. Charming Jersey cattle came to the fence, breathing 
hoarsely from their velvet muzzles at the human beings, 
expecting perhaps a crust. 

Birkin leaned on the fence. A cow was breathing wet 
hotness on his hand. 

“Pretty cattle, very pretty,” said Marshall, one of the 
brothers-in-law. ‘They give the best milk you can have.” 

“Yes,” said Birkin. 

“Eh, my little beauty, eh, my beauty!” said Marshall, in a 
queer high falsetto voice, that caused the other man to have 
convulsions of laughter in his stomach. 

“Who won the race, Lupton?” he called to the bridegroom, 
to hide the fact that he was laughing. 

The bridegroom took his cigar from his mouth. 

“The race?” he exclaimed. Then a rather thin smile came 
over his face. He did not want to say anything about the 
flight to the church door. “We got there together. At least 
she touched first, but I had my hand on her shoulder. « 

“What’s this?” asked Gerald. 

Birkin told him about the race of the bride and the bride- 
groom. 

“H’m!” said Gerald, in disapproval. “What made you late 
then?” 

“Lupton would talk about the immortality of the soul,” 
said Birkin, “and then he hadn’t got a button-hook.” 

“Oh God!” cried Marshall. ‘The immortality of the soul 
on your wedding day! . Hadn’t you got anything better to 
occupy your mind?” 


ae eS 


—— a 


SHORTLANDS 35 


“What’s wrong with it?” asked the bridegroom, a clean- 
shaven naval man, flushing sensitively. 

“Sounds as if you were going to be executed instead of mar- 
ried. The immortality of the soull’’ repeated the brother-in- 
law, with most killing emphasis. 

But he fell quite flat. 

“And what did you decide?” asked Gerald, at once prick- 
ing up his ears at the thought of a metaphysical discussion. 

“You don’t want a soul to-day, my boy,” said Marshall. 
“Tt’d be in your road.” 

“Christ! Marshall, go and talk to somebody else,” cried 
Gerald, with sudden impatience. 

“By God, I’m willing,” said Marshall, in a temper. “Too 
much bloody soul and talk altogether—” 

He withdrew in a dudgeon, Gerald staring after him with 
angry eyes, that grew gradually calm and amiable as the 
stoutly-built form of the other man passed into the distance. 

“There’s one thing, Lupton,” said Gerald, turning suddenly 
to the bridegroom. ‘Laura won’t have brought such a fool 
into the family as Lottie did.” 

“Comfort yourself with that,” laughed Birkin. 

“T take no notice of them,” laughed the bridegroom. 

“What about this race then—who began it?” Gerald asked. 

“We were late. Laura was at the top of the churchyard 
steps when our cab came up. She saw Lupton bolting towards 
her. And she fled—But why do you look so cross? Does it 
hurt your sense of the family dignity?” 

“Tt does, rather,” said Gerald. “If you’re doing a thing, 
do it properly, and if you’re not going to do it properly, leave 
it alone.” 

“Very nice aphorism,” said Birkin. 

“Don’t you agree?” asked Gerald. 

“Quite,” said Birkin. “Only it bores me rather, when you 
become aphoristic.” 

“Damn you, Rupert, you want all the aphorisms your own 
way,” said Gerald. 

“No. I want them out of the way, and you’re always 
shoving them in it.” 


36 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gerald smiled grimly at this humourism. Then he made a 
little gesture of dismissal, with his eyebrows. 

“You don’t believe in having any standard of behaviour at 
all, do you?” he challenged Birkin, censoriously. 

“Standard—no. I hate standards. But they’re necessary 
for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be 
himself and do as he likes.” 

“But what do you mean by being himself?” said Gerald. 
“is that an aphorism or a cliché?” 

“T mean just doing what you want to do. I think it was 
perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church 
door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form. It’s the 
hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one’s im- 
pulses—and it’s the only really gentlemanly thing to do—pro- 
vided you're fit to do it.” | 

“You don’t expect me to take you seriously, do you?” asked 
Gerald. 

“Yes, Gerald, you’re one of the very few people I do expect 
that of.” 

“Then I’m afraid I can’t come up to your expectations here, 
at any rate.—You think people should just do as they like.” 

“T think they always do. But I should like them to like 
the purely individual thing in themselves, which makes them 
act in singleness. And they only like to do the collective 
thing.” 

“And I,” said Gerald grimly, “shouldn’t like to be in a world 
of people who acted individually and spontaneously, as you 
call it. We should have everybody cutting everybody else’s 
throat in five minutes.” 

“That means you would like to be cutting everybody’s 
throat,” said Birkin. 

“How does that follow?” asked Gerald crossly. 

“No man,” said Birkin, “cuts another man’s throat unless 
he wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants it cut. 
This is a complete truth. It takes two people to make a mur- 
derer: a murder and a murderee. And a murderee is a man 
who is murderable. And a man who is murderable is a man 
who in a profound if hidden lust desires to be murdered.” 


SHORTLANDS 37 


“Sometimes you talk pure nonsense,” said Gerald to Birkin. 
“As a matter of fact, none of us wants our throat cut, and 
most other people would like to cut it for us—some time or 
other—” | 

“Tt’s a nasty view of things, Gerald,” said Birkin, “and no 
wonder you are afraid of yourself and your own unhappiness.” 

“How am I afraid of myself?” said Gerald; “and I don’t 
think I am unhappy.” 

“You seem to have a lurking desire to have your gizzard slit, 
and imagine every man has his knife up his sleeve for you,” 
Birkin said. 

“How do you make that out?” said Gerald. 

“From you,” said Birkin. 

There was a pause of strange enmity between the two men, 
that was very near to love. It was always the same between 
them; always their talk brought them into a deadly nearness 
of contact, a strange, perilous intimacy which was either hate 
or love, or both. They parted with apparent unconcern, as if 
their going apart were a trivial occurrence. And they really 
kept it to the level of trivial occurrence. Yet the heart of 
each burned from the other. They burned with each other, 
inwardly. This they would never admit. They intended to 
keep their relationship a casual free and easy friendship, they 
were not going to be so unmanly and unnatural as to allow 
any heart-burning between them. They had not the faintest 
belief in deep relationship between men and men, and their 
disbelief prevented any development of their powerful but 
suppressed friendliness. 


CHAPTER III 
CLASS-ROOM. 


A SCHOOL-DAY was drawing to a close. In the class-room the 
last lesson was in progress, peaceful and still. It was ele- 
mentary botany. The desks were littered with catkins, hazel 
and willow, which the children had been sketching. But the 
sky had come over dark, as the end of the afternoon ap- 
proached: there was scarcely light to draw any more. Ursula 
stood in front of the class, leading the children by questions 
to understand the structure and the meaning of the catkins. 

A heavy copper-coloured beam of light came in at the west 
window, gilding the outlines of the children’s heads with red 
gold, and falling on the wall opposite in a rich, ruddy illumina- 
tion. Ursula, however, was scarcely conscious of it. She was 
busy, the end of the day was here, the work went on as a 
peaceful tide that is at flood, hushed to retire. 

This day had gone by like so many more, in an activity that 
was like a trance. At the end there was a little haste, to finish 
what was in hand. She was pressing the children with ques- 
tions, so that they should know all they were to know, by the 
time the gong went. She stood in shadow in front of the class, 
with catkins in her hand, and she leaned towards the children, 
absorbed in the passion of instruction. ; 

She heard, but did not notice the click of the door. Sud- 
denly she started. She saw, in the shaft of ruddy, copper- 
coloured light near her, the face of a man. It was gleaming 
like fire, watching her, waiting for her to be aware. It startled 
her terribly. She thought she was going to faint. All her 
suppressed, subconscious fear sprang into being, with anguish. 

“Did I startle you?” said Birkin, shaking hands with her. 
“T thought you had heard me come in.” 

“No,” she faltered, scarcely able to speak. He laughed, 
saying he was sorry. She wondered why it amused him. 

38 


CLASS-ROOM 39 


“Tt is so dark,” he said. ‘Shall we have the light?” 

And moving aside, he switched on the strong electric lights. 
The class-room was distinct and hard, a strange place after 
the soft dim magic that filled it before he came. Birkin turned 
curiously to look at Ursula. Her eyes were round and won- 
dering, bewildered, her mouth quivered slightly. She looked 
like one who is suddenly wakened. There was a living, tender 
beauty, like a tender light of dawn shining from her face. He 
looked at her with a new pleasure, feeling gay in his heart, 
irresponsible. 

“You are doing catkins?” he asked, picking up a piece of 
hazel from a scholar’s desk in front of him. ‘Are they as far 
out as this? I hadn’t noticed them this year.” 

He looked absorbedly at the tassel of hazel in his hand. 

“The red ones too!” he said, looking at the flickers of 
crimson that came from the female bud. 

Then he went in among the desks, to see the scholars’ books. 
Ursula watched his intent progress. There was a stillness in 
his motion that hushed the activities of her heart. She seemed 
to be standing aside in arrested silence, watching him move in 
another, concentrated world. His presence was so quiet, almost 
like a vacancy in the corporate air. 

Suddenly he lifted his face to her, and her heart quickened 
at the flicker of his voice. 

“Give them some crayons, won’t you?” he said, “so that 
they can make the gynaecious flowers red, and the andro- 
gynous yellow. I’d chalk them in plain, chalk in nothing else, 
merely the red and the yellow. Outline scarcely matters in 
this case. There is just the one fact to emphasize.” —_, 

“T haven’t any crayons,” said Ursula. 

“There will be some somewhere—red and yellow, that’s all 
you want.” | 

Ursula sent out a boy on a quest. 

“Tt will make the books untidy,” she said to Birkin, flushing 
deeply. | 

“Not very,” he said. “You must mark in these things 
obviously. It’s the fact you want to emphasize, not the sub- 
jective impression to record. What’s the fact?—red little spiky 


40 WOMEN IN LOVE 


stigmas of the female flower, dangling yellow male catkin, yel- 
low pollen flying from one to the other. Make a pictorial 
record of the fact, as a child does when drawing a face—two 
eyes, one nose, mouth with teeth—so—.” And he drew a figure 
on the blackboard. 

At that moment another vision was seen through the glass 
panels of the door. It was Hermione Roddice. Birkin went 
and opened to her. 

“I saw your car,” she said to him. “Do you mind my com- 
ing to find you? I wanted to see you when you were on duty.” 

She looked at him for a long time, intimate and playful, 
then she gave a short little laugh. And then only she turned 
to Ursula, who, with all the class, had been watching the little 
scene between the lovers. 

“Flow do you do, Miss Brangwen,” sang Hermione, in her 
low, odd, singing fashion, that sounded almost as if she were 
poking fun. “Do you mind my coming in?” 

Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ur- | 
sula, as if summing her up. 

“Oh no,” said Ursula. 

“Are you sure?” repeated Hermione, with complete sang- 
froid, and an odd, half-bullying effrontery. 

“Oh no, I like it awfully,” laughed Ursula, a little bit ex- 
cited and bewildered, because Hermione seemed to be compel- 
ling her, coming very close to her, as if intimate with her; and 
yet, how could she be intimate? 

This was the answer Hermione wanted. She turned satis- 
fied to Birkin. , 

“What are you doing?” she sang, in her casual, inquisitive 
fashion. 

“Catkins,” he replied. 

“Really!” she said. “And what do you learn about them?” 
She spoke all the while in a mocking, half-teasing fashion, as 
if making game of the whole business. She picked up a twig 
of the catkin, piqued by Birkin’s attention to it. 

She was a strange figure in the class-room, wearing a large, 
old cloak of greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of 
dull gold. The high collar, and the inside of the cloak was 


CLASS-ROOM 4l 


lined with dark fur. Beneath she had a dress of fine lavender- 
coloured cloth, trimmed with fur, and her hat was close-fitting, 
made of fur and of the dull, green-and-gold figured stuff. She 
was tall and strange, she looked as if she had come out of 
some new, bizarre picture. 

“Do you know the little red ovary flowers, that produce 
the nuts? Have you ever noticed them?” he asked her. And 
he came close and pointed them out to her, on the sprig 
she held. 

“No,” she replied. “What are they?” 

“Those are the little seed-producing flowers, and the long 
catkins, they only produce pollen, to fertilise them.” 

“Do they, do they!” repeated Hermione, looking closely. 

“From those little red bits, the nuts come; if they receive 
pollen from the long danglers.” 

“Tittle red flames, little red flames, ” murmured Hermione 
to herself. And she remained for some moments looking only 
at the small rial out of which the red flickers of the stigma 
issued. 

“Aren’t they beautiful? I think they’re so beautiful,” she 
said, moving close to Birkin, and pointing to the red filaments 
with her long, white finger. 

“Had you never noticed them before?” he asked. 

“No, never before,” she replied. 

“And now you will always see them,” he said. 

“Now I shall always see them,” she repeated. “Thank you 
so much for showing me. I think they’re so beautiful—iittle 
red flames—” 

Her absorption was strange, almost rhapsodic. Both Birkin 
and Ursula were suspended. The little red pistillate flowers 
had some strange, almost mystic-passionate attractioa for her. 

The lesson was finished, the books were put away, at last 
the class was dismissed. And still Hermione sat at the table, 
with her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table, ber long 
white face pushed up, not attending to anything. Birkin had 
gone to the window, and was looking from the brilliantly- 
lighted room on to the grey, colourless outside, where rain 


42 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was noiselessly falling. Ursula put away her things in the 
cupboard. , 

At length Hermione rose and came near to her. 

“Your sister has come home?” she said. 

“Yes,” said Ursula. | 

“And does she like being back in Beldover?” - 

“No,” said Ursula. 

“No, I wonder she can bear it. It takes all my strength 
to bear the ugliness of this district, when I stay here. Won’t 
you come and see me? Won’t you come with your sister to 
stay at Breadalby for a few days?—do—” 

“Thank you very much,” said Ursula. 

“Then I will write to you,” said Hermione. “You think 
your sister will come? I should be so glad. I think she is 
wonderful. I think some of her work is really wonderful. I 
have two water-wagtails, carved in wood, and painted—per- 
haps you have seen it?” 

“No,” said Ursula. 

“T think it is perfectly wonderful—like a flash of instinct—” 

“Her little carvings are strange,” said Ursula. 

“Perfectly beautiful—full of primitive passion—” 

“Isn’t it queer that she always likes little things?—she must 
always work small things, that one can put between one’s 
hands, birds and tiny animals. She likes to look through the 
wrong end of the opera glasses, and see the world that way— 
why is it, do you think?” | 

Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long, detached 
scrutinising gaze that excited the younger woman. 

“Yes,” said Hermione at length. “It is curious. The little 
things seem to be more subtle to her—” 

“But they aren’t, are they? A mouse isn’t any more subtle 
than a lion, is it?” 

Again Hermione looked down at Ursula with that long 
scrutiny, as if she were following some train of thought of her 
own, and barely attending to the other’s speech. 

“T don’t know,” she replied. 

“Rupert, Rupert,” she sang mildly, calling him to her. He 
approached in silence. , 


CLASS-ROOM 43 


“Are little things more subtle than big things?” she asked, 
with the odd grunt of laughter in her voice, as if she were 
making game of him in the question. 

“Dunno,” he said. 

“T hate subtleties,” said Ursula. 

Hermione looked at her slowly. 

“Do you?” she said. 

“T always think they are a sign of weakness,” said Ursula, 
up in arms, as if her prestige were threatened. 

Hermione took no notice. Suddenly her face puckered, her 
brow was knit with thought, she seemed twisted in trouble— 
some effort for utterance. 

“Do you really think, Rupert,” she asked, as if Ursula were 
not present, “do you really think it is worth while? Do you 
really think the children are better for being roused to con- 
sciousness?” : 

A dark flash went over his face, a silent fury. He was 
hollow-cheeked and pale, almost unearthly. And the woman, 
with her serious, conscience-harrowing question tortured him 
on the quick. 

“They are not roused to consciousness,” he said. “Con- 
sciousness comes to them, willy-nilly.” 

“But do you think they are better for having it quickened, 
stimulated? Isn’t it better that they should remain uncon- — 
scious of the hazel, isn’t it better that they should see as a 
whole, without all this pulling to pieces, all this knowledge?”’ 

“Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that 
the little red flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?” 
he asked harshly. His voice was brutal, scornful, cruel. 

Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He 
hung silent in irritation. 

“T don’t know,” she replied, balancing mildly. “I don’t 
know.” 

“But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,” he 
broke out. She slowly looked at him. 

“Ts it?” she said. | 

“To know, that is your all, that is your life—you have only 


44 WOMEN IN LOVE 


this, this knowledge,” he cried. ‘There is only one tree, there 
is only one fruit, in your mouth.” 

Again she was some time silent. 

“Ts there?” she said at last, with the same Gaioeead calm. 
And then in a tone of whimaical inquisitiveness: “What fruit, 
Rupert?” 

“The eternal apple,” he replied in exasperation, hating his 
own metaphors. 

“Yes,” she said. There was a look of exhaustion about 
her. For some moments there was silence. Then, pulling her- 
self together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, 
in a sing-song, casual voice: 

“But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children 
are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you 
really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, 
spontaneous. Hadn’t they better be animals, simple animals, 
crude, violent, anything, rather than this self-consciousness, 
this incapacity to be spontaneous.” 

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling 
in her throat she resumed, ‘“Hadn’t they better be anything 
than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their 
feelings—so thrown back—so turned back on themselves— 
incapable—” Hermione clenched her fist like one in a 
trance—“of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always 
burdened with choice, never carried away.” 

Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was 
going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody—‘never car- 
ried away, out of themselves, always conscious, always self- 
conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn’t anything better 
than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at 
all, than this, this nothingness—” 

“But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving 
and self-conscious?” he asked irritably. 

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly. 

“Yes,” she said. She paused, watching him all the while, 
her eyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, 
with a vague weariness. It irritated him bitterly. “It is the 
mind,” she said, “and that is death.” She raised her eyes 


CLASS-ROOM 45 


slowly to him: “Isn’t the mind—” she said, with the con- 
vulsed movement of her body, “isn’t it our death? Doesn’t 
it destroys all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the 
young people growing up to-day, really dead before they have 
a chance to live?” | 

“Not because they have too much mind, but too little,” he 
said brutally. 

“Are you sure?” she cried. “It seems to me the reverse. 
They are over-conscious, burdened to death with conscious- 
ness.” 

“Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,” he cried. 

But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own 
rhapsodic interrogation. 

“When we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but 
knowledge?”’ she asked pathetically. “If I know about the 
flower, don’t I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? 
Aren’t we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren’t 
we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge? And 
what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this know- 
ing mean to me? It means nothing.” 

“You are merely making words,” he said; “knowledge means 
everything to you. Even your animalism, you want it in your 
head. You don’t want to be an animal, you want to observe 
your own animal functions, to get a mental thrill out of them. 
It is all purely secondary—and more decadent than the most 
hide-bound intellectualism. What is it but the worst and last 
form of intellectualism, this love of yours for passion and the 
animal instincts? Passion and the instincts—you want them 
hard enough, but through your head, in your consciousness. It 
all takes place in your head, under that skull of yours. Only 
you won’t be conscious of what actually is: you want the lie 
that will match the rest of your furniture.” 

Hermione set hard and poisonous against this attack. Ursula 
stood covered with wonder and shame. It frightened her, to 
see how they hated each other. 

“Tt’s all that Lady of Shalott business,” he said, in his 
strong abstract voice. He seemed to be charging her before 
the unseeing air. “You’ve got that mirror, your own fixed 


46 WOMEN IN LOVE 


will, your immortal understanding, your own tight conscious 
world, and there is nothing beyond it. There, in the mirror, 
you must have everything. But now you have come to all 
your conclusions, you want to go back and be like a savage, 
without knowledge. You want a life of pure sensation and 
‘passion.’ ” 

He quoted the last word satirically against her. She sat 
convulsed with fury and violation, speechless, like a stricken 
pythoness of the Greek oracle. 

“But your passion is a lie,” he went on violently. “It isn’t 
passion at all, it is your will. It’s your bullying will. You 
want to clutch things and have them in your power. You 
want to have things in your power. And why? Because you 
haven’t got any real body, any dark sensual body of life. 
You have no sensuality. You have only your will and your 
conceit of consciousness, and your lust for power, to know.” 

He looked at her in mingled hate and contempt, also in pain 
because she suffered, and in shame because he knew he tor- 
tured her. He had an impulse to kneel and plead for forgive- 
ness. But a bitterer red anger burned up to fury in him. He 
became unconscious of her, he was only a passionate voice 
speaking. 

“Spontaneous!” he cried. ‘You and spontaneity! Ydu, 
the most deliberate thing that ever walked or crawled! You’d 
be verily deliberately spontaneous—that’s you.—Because you 
want to have everything in your own volition, your deliberate 
voluntary consciousness. You want it all in that loathsome 
little skull of yours, that ought to be cracked like a nut. For 
you'll be the same till it is cracked, like an insect in its skin. 
If one cracked your skull perhaps one might get a spon- 
taneous, passionate woman out of you, with real sensuality. 
As it is, what you want is pornography—looking at yourself in 
mirrors, watching your naked animal actions in mirrors, so 
that you can have it all in your consciousness, make it all 
mental.” 

There was a sense of violation in the air, as if too much 
was said, the unforgivable. Yet Ursula was concerned now 


CLASS-ROOM 47 


only with solving her own problems, in the light of his words. 
She was pale and abstracted. 

“But do you really want sensuality?” she asked, puzzled. 

Birkin looked at her, and became intent in his explanation. 

“Yes,” he said, “that and nothing else, at this point. It is 
a fulfilment—the great dark knowledge you can’t have in your 
head—the dark involuntary being. It is death to one self— 
but it is the coming into being of another.” 

“But how? How can you have knowledge not in your 
~~ head?” she asked, quite unable to interpret his phrases. 

“Tn the blood,” he answered; “when the mind and the known 
world is drowned in darkness—everything must go—there must 
be the deluge. Then you find yourself a palpable body of 
darkness, a demon—” 

“But why should I be a demon—?” she asked. 

“ “Woman wailing for her demon lover’—” he quoted—“why, 
I don’t know.” 

Hermione roused herself as from a death—annihilation. 

“He is sucha dreadful satanist, isn’t he?” she drawled 
to Ursula, in a queer resonant voice, that ended in a shrill 
little laugh of pure ridicule. The two women were jeering at 
him, jeering him into nothingness. The laugh of the sneering, 
shrill, triumphant female sounded from Hermione, jeering him 
as if he were a neuter. 

“No,” he said. “You are the real devil who won’t let life 
exist.” 

She looked at him with a long, slow look, malevolent, 
supercilious. 

“You know all about it, don’t you?” she said, with slow, 
cold, cunning mockery. 

“Enough,” he replied, his face fixing fine and clear like 
steel. A horrible despair, and at the same time a sense of 
release, liberation, came over Hermione. She turned with a 
pleasant intimacy to Ursula. 

“You are sure you will come to Breadalby?” she said, 

“Yes, I should like to very much,” replied Ursula. 


48 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Hermione looked down at her, gratified, reflecting, and 
strangely absent, as if possessed, as if not quite there. 

“I’m so glad,” she said, pulling herself together. “Some 
time in about a fortnight. Yes?—I will write to you here, at 
the school, shall I?—-Yes.—And you'll be sure to come?—Yes. 
—I shall be so glad. Good-bye—Goo-ood-bye——” 

Hermione held out her hand and looked into the eyes of the 
other woman. She knew Ursula as an immediate rival, and 
the knowledge strangely exhilarated her. Also she was taking 
leave. It always gave her a sense of strength, advantage, to 
be departing and leaving the other behind. Moreover she 
was taking the man with her, if only in hate. 

Birkin stood aside, fixed and unreal. But now, when it was 
his turn to bid good-bye, he began to speak again. 

“There’s the whole difference in the world,” he said, “be- 
tween the actual sensual being, and the vicious mental-delib- 
erate profligacy our lot goes in for. In our night-time, there’s 
always the electricity switched on, we watch ourselves, we 
get it all in the head, really. You’ve got to lapse out before 
you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowing- 
ness, and give up your volition. You’ve got to do it. You’ve 
got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being. 

“But we have got such a conceit of ourselves—that’s where 
it is. We are so conceited, and so unproud. We’ve got no 
pride, we’re all conceit, so conceited in our own papier-maché 
realised selves. We’d rather die than give up our little self- 
righteous self-opinionated self-will.” 

There was silence in the room. Both women were hostile 
and resentful. He sounded as if he were addressing a meet- 
ing. Hermione merely paid no attention, stood with her 
shoulders tight in a shrug of dislike. 

Ursula was watching him as if furtively, not really aware 
of what she was seeing. There was a great physical attractive- 
ness in him—a curious hidden richness, that came through 
his thinness and his pallor like another voice, conveying an- 
other knowledge of him. It was in the curves of his brows and 
his chin, rich, fine, exquisite curves, the powerful beauty of 
life itself, something like laughter, invisible and satisfying. 


CLASS-ROOM 49 


Also the magic of his thighs had fascinated her: the inner 
slopes of his thighs. She could not say what it was. But 
there was a sense of richness and of strong, free liberty. 

“But we are sensual enough, without making ourselves so, 
aren’t we?” she asked, turning to him with a certain golden 
laughter flickering under her greenish eyes, like a challenge. 
And immediately the queer, careless, terribly attractive smile 
came over his eyes and brows, though his mouth did not relax. 

“No,” he said, “we aren’t. We’re too full of ourselves.” 

“Surely it isn’t a matter of conceit,” she cried. 

“That and nothing else.” 

She was frankly puzzled. 

“Don’t you think that people are most conceited of all about 
their sensual powers?” she asked. 

“That’s why they aren’t sensual—only sensuous—which is 
another matter. They’re always aware of themselves—and 
they're so conceited, that rather than release themselves, and 
live in another world: from another centre, they’d—” 

“You want your tea, don’t you,” said Hermione, turning 
te Ursula with a gracious kindliness. ‘“You’ve worked all 
day—” 

Birkin stopped short. A spasm of anger and chagrin went 
over Ursula. His face set. And he bade good-bye, as if he 
had ceased to notice her. 

They were gone. Ursula stood looking at the door for some 
moments. Then she put out the lights. And having done so, 
she sat down again in her chair, absorbed and lost. And 
then she began to cry, bitterly, bitterly weeping: but whether 
for misery or joy, she never knew. 


CHAPTER IV 
DIVER 


THE week passed away. On the Saturday it rained, a soft 
drizzling rain that held off at times. In one of the intervals 
Gudrun and Ursula set out for a walk, going towards Willey 
Water. The atmosphere was grey and translucent, the birds 
sang sharply on the young twigs, the earth would be quicken- 
ing and hastening in growth. Tho two girls walked swiftly, 
gladly, because of the soft, subtle rush of morning that filled 
the wet haze. By the road the blackthorn was in blossom, 
white and wet, its tiny amber grains burning faintly in the 
white smoke of blossom. Purple twigs were darkly luminous 
in the grey air, high hedges glowed like living shadows, hover- 
ing nearer, coming into creation. The morning was full of a 
new creation. 

When the sisters came to Willey Water, the lake lay all 
grey and visionary, stretching into the moist, translucent vista 
of trees and meadow. Fine electric activity in sound came 
from the dumbles below the road, the birds piping one 
against the other, and water mysteriously plashing, issuing 
from the lake. 

The two girls drifted swiftly along. In front of them, at 
the corner of the lake, near the road, was a mossy boat- 
house under a walnut tree, and a little landing-stage where 
a boat was moored, wavering like a shadow on the still grey 
water, below the green, decayed poles. All was shadowy with 
coming summer. 

Suddenly, from the boat-house, a white figure ran out, 
frightening in its swift sharp transit, across the old land-stage. 
It launched in a white arc through the air, there was a burst- 
ing of the water, and among the smooth ripples a swimmer 
‘was making out to space, in a centre of faintly heaving mo- 

50 


DIVER st 


tion. The whole otherworld, wet and remote, he had to him- 
self. He could move into the pure translucency of the grey, 
uncreated water. 

Gudrun stood by the stone wall, watching. 

“How I envy him,” she said, in low, desirous tones. 

“Ugh!” shivered Ursula. “So cold!” 

“Yes, but how good, how really fine, to swim out there!” 
The sisters stood watching the swimmer move further into the 
grey, moist, full space of the water, pulsing with his own 
small, invading motion, and arched over with mist and dim 
woods. 

“Don’t you wish it were you?” asked Gudrun, looking at 
Ursula. 

“T do,” said Ursula. “But I’m not sure—it’s so wet.” 

“No,” said Gudrun, reluctantly. She stood watching the 
motion on the bosom of the water, as if fascinated. He, hav- 
ing swum a certain distance, turned round and was swimming _ 
on his back, looking along the water at the two girls by the 
wall. In the faint wash of motion, they could see his ruddy 
face, and could feel him watching them. 

“Tt is Gerald Crich,” said Ursula. 

“T know,” replied Gudrun. 

And she stood motionless gazing over the water at the 
face which washed up and down on the flood, as he swam 
steadily. From his separate element he saw them and he 
exulted to himself because of his own advantage, his posses- 
sion of a world to himself. He was immune and perfect. He 
loved his own vigorous, thrusting motion, and the violent im- 
pulse of the very cold water against his limbs, buoying him 
up. He could see the girls watching him away off, outside, 
and that pleased him. He lifted his arm from the water, in a 
sign to them. 

“He is waving,” said Ursula. 

“Yes,” replied Gudrun. They watched him. He waved 
again, with a strange movement of recognition across the 
difference. 

“Like a Nibelung,” laughed Ursula. Gudrun said nothing, 
only stood still looking over the water. 


52 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gerald suddenly turned, and was swimming away swiftly, 
with a side stroke. He was alone now, alone and immune in 
the middle of the waters, which he had all to himself. He 
exulted in his isolation in the new element, unquestioned and 
unconditioned. He was happy, thrusting with his legs and all 
his body, without bond or connection anywhere just himself 
of the watery world. 

Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this momentary 
possession of pure isolation and fluidity seemed to her so ter- 
ribly desirable that she felt herself as if damned, out there 
on the high-road. 

“God, what it is to be a man!” she cried. 

“What?” exclaimed Ursula in surprise. 

“The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!” cried Gudrun, 
strangely flushed and brilliant. “You’re a man, you want to 
do a thing, you do it. You haven’t the thousand obstacles a 
woman has in front of her.” 

Ursula wondered what was in Gudrun’s mind, to occasion 
this outburst. She could not understand. 

“What do you want to do?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” cried Gudrun, in swift refutation. “But suppos- 
ing I did. Supposing I want to swim up that water. It is 
impossible, it is one of the impossibilities of life, for me to 
take my clothes off now and jump in. But isn’t it ridiculous, 
doesn’t it simply prevent our living!” 

She was so hot, so flushed, so furious, that Ursula was 
puzzled. 

The two sisters went on, up the road. They were passing 
between the trees just below Shortlands. They looked up at 
the long, low house, dira and glamorous in the wet morning, 
its cedar trees slanting before the windows. Gudrun seemed 
to be studying it closely. 

“Don’t you think it’s attractive, Ursula?” asked Gudrun. 

“Very,” said Ursula. ‘Very peaceful and charming.” 

“Tt has form, too—it has a period.” 

“What period?” 

“Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth 
and Jane Austen, don’t you think?” 


DIVER 53 


Ursula laughed. 
“Don’t you think so?” repeated Gudrun. 


“Perhaps. But I don’t think the Criches fit the period. 
I know Gerald is putting in a private electric plant, for lighting 
the house, and is making all kinds of latest improvements.” 

Gudrun shrugged her shoulders swiftly. 

“Of course,” she said, “that’s quite inevitable.” 

“Quite,” laughed Ursula. “He is several generations of 
youngness at one go. They hate him for it. He takes them«all 
by the scruff of the neck, and fairly flings them along. He'll 
have to die soon, when he’s made every possible improvement, 
and there will be nothing more to improve. He’s got ga, 
anyhow.” 

“Certainly, he’s got go,” said Gudrun. “In fact I’ve never 
seen a man that showed signs of so much. The unfortunate 
thing is, where does his go go to, what becomes of it?” 

“Oh, I know,” said Ursula. “It goes in applying the latest 
appliances!” | 

“Exactly,” said Gudrun. 

“You know he shot his brother?” said Ursula. 

“Shot his brother?” cried Gudrun, frowning as if in dis- 
approbation. 

“Didn’t you know? Oh, yes!—I thought you knew. He 
and his brother were playing together with a gun. He told 
his brother to look down the gun, and it was loaded, and 
blew the top of his head off. Isn’t it a horrible story?” 

“How fearful!” cried Gudrun. “But it is long ago?” 

“Oh, yes, they were quite boys,” said Ursula. “I think it 
is one of the most horrible stories I know.” 

“And he, of course, did not know that the gun was loaded?” 

“Yes. You see it was an old thing that had been lying in the 
stable for years. Nobody dreamed it would ever go off, and 
of course, no one imagined it was loaded. But isn’t it dreadful, 
that it should happen?” 

“Frightful!” cried Gudrun. “And isn’t it horrible too to 
think of such a thing happening to one, when one was a child, 
and having to carry the responsibility of it all through one’s 
life. Imagine it, two boys playing together—then this comes 


54 WOMEN IN LOVE 


upon them, for no reason whatever—out of the air. Ursula, 
it’s very frightening! Oh, it’s one of the things I can’t bear. 
Murder, that is thinkable, because there’s a will behind it. 
But a thing like that to happen to one—” 

“Perhaps there was an unconscious will behind it,” said 
Ursula. “This playing at killing has some primitive desire for 
killing in it, don’t you think?” 

“Desire!” said Gudrun, coldly, stiffening a little. “I can’t 
see that they were even playing at killing. I suppose one boy 
said to the other, ‘You look down the barrel while I pull the 
_ trigger, and see what happens.’ It seems to me the purest 
form of accident.” 

“No,” said Ursula. “I couldn’t pull the trigger of the 
emptiest gun in the world, not if someoné were looking down 
the barrel. One instinctively doesn’t do it—one can’t.” 

Gudrun was silent for some moments, in sharp disagreement. 

“Of course,” she said coldly. “If one is a woman, and grown 
up, one’s instinct prevents one. But I cannot see how that 
applies to a couple of boys playing together.” 

Her voice was cold and angry. 

“Yes,” persisted Ursula. At that moment they heard a 
woman’s voice a few yards off say loudly: 

“Oh, damn the thing!” They went forward and saw Laura 
Crich and Hermione Roddice in the field on the other side 
of the hedge, and Laura Crich struggling with the gate, to 
get out. Ursula at once hurried up and helped to lift the gate. 

“Thanks so much,” said Laura, looking up flushed and 
amazon-like, yet rather confused. “It isn’t right on the 
hinges.” 

“No,” said Ursula. “And they’re so heavy.” 

“Surprising!” cried Laura. 

“How do you do,” sang Hermione, from out of the field, 
the moment she could make her voice heard. “It’s nice now. 
Are you going for a walk? Yes. Isn’t the young green beau- 
tiful? So beautiful—quite burning. Good morning—good 
morning—you’ll come and see me? Thank you so much— 
next week—yes—good-bye, g-0-o0-d-b-y-e.” 

Gudrun and Ursula stood and watched her slowly waving 


DIVER 55 


her head wp and down, and waving her hand slowly in dis- 
missal, smiling a strange affected smile, making a tall queer, 
frightening figure, with her heavy fair hair slipping to her 
eyes. Then they moved off, as if they had been dismissed like 
inferiors. ‘The four women parted. 

As soon as they had gone far enough, Ursula said, her 
cheeks burning: 

“T do think she’s impudent.” 

“Who, Hermione Roddice?” asked Gudrun. “Why?” 

“The way she treats one—impudence!” 

“Why, Ursula, what did you notice that was so impudent?” 
asked Gudrun rather coldly. 

“Her whole manner. Oh, it’s impossible, the way she tries 
to bully one. Pure bullying. She’s an impudent woman. 
“You'll come and see me,’ as if we should be falling over our- 
selves for the privilege.” 

“T can’t understand, Ursula, what you are so much put out 
about,” said Gudrun, in some exasperation. ‘One knows those 
women are impudent—these free women who have emanci- 
pated themselves from the aristocracy.” 

“But it is so wnnecessary—so vulgar,” cried Ursula. 

“No, I don’t see it. And if I did—pour moi, elle n’existe 
pas. I don’t grant her the power to be impudent to me.” 

“Do you think she likes you?” asked Ursula. 

“Well, no, I shouldn’t think she did.” 

“Then why does she ask you to go to Breadalby and stay 
with her?” 

Gudrun lifted her shoulders in a low shrug. 

“After all, she’s got the sense to know we're not just the 
ordinary run,” said Gudrun. “Whatever she is, she’s not a 
fool. And I’d rather have somebody I detested, than the 
ordinary woman who keeps to her own set. Hermione Rod- 
dice does risk herself in some respects.” 

Ursula pondered this for a time. 

“T doubt it,” she replied. ‘Really she risks nothing. I 
suppose we ought to admire her for knowing she cam invite 
us—school teachers—and risk nothing.” 

“Precisely!” said Gudrun. “Think of the myriads of 


56 WOMEN IN LOVE 


women that daren’t do it. She makes the most of her privileges 
—that’s something. I suppose, really, we should do the same, 
in her place.” 

“No,” said Ursula. ‘No. It would bore me. I couldn’t 
spend my time playing her games. It’s infra dig.” 

_ The two sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off 
everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a 
whetstone, the one sharpened against the other. 

“Of course,” cried Ursula suddenly, “she ought to thank 
her stars if we will go and see her. You are perfectly beauti- 
ful, a thousand times more beautiful than ever she is or was, 
and to my thinking, a thousand times more beautifully dressed, 
for she never looks fresh and natural, like a flower, always old, 
thought-out; and we are more intelligent than most people.” 

“Undoubtedly!” said Gudrun. 

“And it ought to be admitted, simply,” said Ursula. 

“Certainly it ought,” said Gudrun. “But you'll find that 
the really chic thing is to be so absolutely ordinary, so per- 
fectly commonplace and like the person in the street, that 
you really are a masterpiece of humanity, not the person in 
the street actually, but the artistic creation of her—” 

“How awful!” cried Ursula. 

“Yes, Ursula, it is awful in most respects. You daren’t be 
anything that isn’t amazingly a terre, so much 4 terre that it 
is the artistic creation of ordinariness.” 

“It’s very dull to create oneself into nothing better,” laughed 
Ursula. — 

“Very dull!” retorted Gudrun. “Really, Ursula, it is dull, 
that’s just the word. One longs to be high-flown, and make 
speeches like Corneille, after it.” 

Gudrun was becoming flushed and excited over her own 
cleverness. 

“Strut,” said Ursula. “One wants to strut, to be a swan 
among geese.” 

“Exactly,” cried Gudrun, iis swan among geese.” 

“They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,” cried 
Ursula, with mocking laughter. ‘And I don’t feel a bit like 
a humble and pathetic ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan. 


DIVER 57 


among geese—I can’t help it. They make one feel so. And 
I don’t care what they think of me. Je m’en fiche.” 

Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy 
and dislike. 

“Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all— 
just all,” she said. 

The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, 
and wait for Monday, for school. Ursula often wondered 
what else she waited for, besides the beginning and end of the 
school week, and the beginning and end of the holidays. . This 
was a whole life! Sometimes she had periods of tight horror, 
when it seemed to her that life would pass away, and be 
gone, without having been more than this. But she never 
really accepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a 
shoot that is growing steadily, but which has not yet come 
above ground. 


CHAPTER V 
IN THE TRAIN 


One day at this time Birkin was called to London. He was: 
not very fixed in his abode. He had rooms in Nottingham, 
because his work lay chiefly in that town. But often he was 
in London, or in Oxford. He moved about a great deal, his 
life seemed uncertain, without any definite rhythm, any or- 
ganic meaning. 

On the platform of the railway station he saw Gerald Crich, 
reading a newspaper, and evidently waiting for the train. 
Birkin stood some distance off, among the people. It was 
against his instinct to approach anybody. 

From time to time, in a manner characteristic of him, 
Gerald lifted his head and looked round. Even though he 
was reading the newspaper closely, he must keep a watchful 
eye on his external surroundings. There seemed to be a dual 
consciousness running in him. He was thinking vigorously 
of something he read in the newspaper, and at the same time 
his eye ran over the surfaces of the life round him, and he 
missed nothing. Birkin, who was watching him, was irritated 
by his duality. He noticed, too, that Gerald seemed always 
to be at bay against everybody, in spite of his queer, genial, 
social manner when roused. 

Now Birkin started violently at seeing this genial look flash 
on to Gerald’s face, at seeing Gerald approaching him hand 
outstretched. 

“Hallo, Rupert, where are you going?” 

“London. So are you, I suppose.” 

“Veq—”? 

Gerald’s eyes went over Birkin’s face in curiosity. 

“We'll travel together if you like,” he said. 

“Don’t you usually go first?” asked Birkin. 

58 


IN THE TRAIN 59 


“J can’t stand the crowd,” replied Gerald. ‘But third’ll be 
all right. There’s a restaurant car, we can have some tea.” 

The two men looked at the station clock, having nothing 
further to say. 

“What were you reading in the paper?” Birkin asked. 

Gerald looked at him quickly. 

“Tsn’t it funny, what they do put in the newspapers,” he 
said. ‘Here are two leaders—” he held out his Daily Tele- 
graph, “full of the ordinary newspaper cant—” he scanned 
the columns down—‘“and then there’s this littlke—I dunno 
what you’d call it, essay, almost—appearing with the leaders, 
and saying there must arise a man who will give new values 
to things, give us new truths, a new attitude to life, or else 
we shall be a crumbling nothingness in a few years, a country 
in ruin—” 

“I suppose that’s a bit of newspaper cant, as well,” said 
Birkin. 

“Tt sounds as if the man meant it, and quite genuinely,” 
said Gerald. 

“Give it to me,” said Birkin, holding out his hand for the 
paper. 

The train came, and they went on board, sitting on either 
side a little table, by the window, in the restaurant car. 
Birkin glanced over his paper, then looked up at Gerald, who 
was waiting for him. 

“T believe the man means it,” he said, “as far as he means 
anything.” 

“And do you think it’s true? Do you think we really want 
a new gospel?” asked Gerald. 

Birkin shrugged his shoulders. 

“T think the people who say they want a new religion are 
the last to accept anything new. They want novelty right 
enough. But to stare straight at this life that we’ve brought 
upon ourselves, and reject it, absolutely smash up the old 
idols of ourselves, that we sh’ll never do. You’ve got very 
badly to want to get rid of the old, before anything new will 
appear—even in the self.” 

Gerald watched him closely. 


60 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“You think we ought to break up this life, just start and let 
fly?” he asked. 

“This life. Yes, Ido. We’ve got to bust it completely, or 
shrivel inside it, as in a tight skin. For it won’t expand any 
more.” 

There was a queer little smile in Gerald’s eyés, a look of 
amusement, calm and curious. 

“And how do you propose to begin? I suppose you mean, 
reform the whole order of society?” he asked. 

Birkin had a slight, tense frown between the brows. He 
too was impatient of the conversation. 

“I don’t propose at all,” he replied. “When we really want 
to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until 
then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more 
than a tiresome game for self-important people.” 

The little smile began to die out of Gerald’s eyes, and he 
said, looking with a cool stare at Birkin: 

“So you really think things are very bad?” 

“Completely bad.” 

The smile appeared again. 

“In what way?” 

“Every way,” said Birkin. “We are such dreary liars. Our 
one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a per- 
fect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the 
earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects 
scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte 
in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in 
your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, 
or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and the Sunday newspapers. It 
is very dreary.” 

Gerald took a little time to re-adjust himself after this 
tirade. | 

“Would you have us live without houses—return to nature?” 
he asked. 

“T would have nothing at all. People only do what they 
want to do—and what they are capable of doing. If they 
were capable of anything else, there would be something else.” 


IN THE TRAIN 61 


Again Gerald pondered. He was not going to take offence 
at Birkin. 

“Don’t you think the collier’s pianoforte, as you call it, is 
a symbol for something very real, a ree desire for something 
higher, in the collier’s life?” 

“Higher!” cried Birkin. “Yes. htatin heights of up- 
right grandeur. It makes him so much higher im his neigh- 
bouring collier’s eyes. He sees himself reflected in the neigh- 
bouring opinion, like in a Brocken mist, several feet taller 
on the strength of the pianoforte, and he is satisfied. He lives 
for the sake of that Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself 
in the human opinion. You do the same. If you are of high 
importance to humanity you are of high importance to your- 
self. That is why you work so hard at the mines. If you can 
produce coal to cook five thousand dinners a day, you are five 
thousand times more important than if you cooked only your 
own dinner.” 

“T suppose I am,” laughed Gerald. 

“Can’t you see,” said Birkin, “that to help my neighbour 
to eat is no more than eating serail ‘I eat, thou eatest, he 
eats, we eat, you eat, they eat’-—and what then? Why should 
every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is 
enough for me.” 

“You’ve got to start with material things,” said Gerald. 
Which statement Birkin ignored. 

“And we’ve got to live for something, we’re not just cattle 
that can graze and have done with it,” said Gerald. 

“Tell me,” said Birkin. “What do you live for?” 

Gerald’s face went baffled. 

“What do I live for?” he repeated. “I suppose I live to 
work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive be- 
ing. Apart from that, I live because I am living.” 

“And what’s your work? Getting so many more thousands 
of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we’ve 
got all the coal we want, and all the plush furniture, and 
pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and eaten, and 
we're all warm and our bellies are filled and we’re listening 


62 WOMEN IN LOVE 


to the young lady performing on the pianoforte—what then? 
What then, when you’ve made a real fair start with your 
material things?” 

Gerald sat laughing at the words and the mocking humour 
of the other man. But he was cogitating too. 

“We haven’t got there yet,” he replied. “A good many 
people are still waiting for the rabbit and the fire to cook it.” 

“So while you get the coal I must chase the rabbit?” said 
Birkin, mocking at Gerald. 

“Something like that,”’ said Gerald. 

Birkin watched him narrowly. He saw the perfect good- 
humoured callousness, even strange, glistening malice, in 
Gerald, glistening through the plausible ethics of productivity. 

“Gerald,” he said, “I rather hate you.” 

“I know you do,” said Gerald. “Why do you?” 

Birkin mused inscrutably for some minutes. 

“T should like to know if you are conscious of hating me,” 
he said at last. “Do you ever consciously detest me—hate 
me with mystic hate? There are odd moments when I hate 
you starrily.” 

Gerald was rather taken aback, even a littk disconcerted. 
He did not quite know what to say. i 

“T may, of course, hate you sometimes,” he said. “But I’m 
not aware of it—never acutely aware of it, that is.” 

“So much the worse,” said Birkin. 

Gerald watched him with curious eyes. He could not quite 
make him out. 

“So much the worse, is it?” he repeated. 

There was a silence between the two men for some time, as 
the train ran on. In Birkin’s face was a little irritable ten- 
sion, a sharp knitting of the brows, keen and difficult. Gerald 
watched him warily, carefully, rather calculatingly, for he 
could not decide what he was after. 

Suddenly Birkin’s eyes looked straight and overpowering 
into those of the other man. 

“What do you think is the aim and object of your life, 
Gerald?” he asked. 


IN THE TRAIN 63 


Again Gerald was taken aback. He could not think what 
his friend was getting at. Was he poking fun, or not? 

“At this moment, I couldn’t say off-hand,” he replied, with 
faintly ironic humour. 

“Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?” 
Birkin asked, with direct, attentive seriousness. 

“Of my own life?” said Gerald. 

“Ves.” 

There was a really puzzled pause. 

“T can’t say,” said Gerald. “It hasn’t been, so far.” 

“What has your life been, so far?” 

“Oh—finding out things for myself—and getting experiences 
—and making things go.” 

Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel. 

“T find,” he said, “that one needs some one real’y pure single 
activity—I should call love a single pure activity. But I don’t 
really love anybody—not now.” 

“Have you ever really loved anybody?” asked Gerald. 

“Yes and no,” replied Birkin. 

“Not finally?” said Gerald. 

“Finally—finally—no,” said Birkin. 

“Nor I,” said Gerald. 

“And do you want to?” said Birkin. 

Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look 
into the eyes of the other man. 

“T don’t know,” he said. 

“T do—I want to love,” said Birkin. 

“You do?” 

“Yes. I want the finality of love.” 

“The finality of love,” repeated Gerald. And he waited for 
a moment. 

“Just one woman,” he added. The evening light, flooding 
yellow along the fields, lit up Birkin’s face with a tense, ab- 
stract steadfastness. Gerald still could not make it out. 

“Yes, one woman,” said Birkin. 

But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than 
confident. 


64 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“T don’t believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will 
ever make my life,” said Gerald. 

“Not the centre and core of it—the love between you and 
a woman?” asked Birkin. 

Gerald’s eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he 
watched the other man. 

“T never quite feel it that way,” he said. 

‘You don’t? Then wherein does life centre, for you?” 

“I don’t know—that’s what I want somebody to tell me. 
As far as I can make out, it doesn’t centre at all. It is arti- 
ficially held together by the social mechanism.” 

Birkin pondered as if he would crack something. 

“T know,” he said, “it just doesn’t centre. The old ideals 
are dead as nails—nothing there. It seems to me there remains 
only this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate mar- 
riage—and there isn’t anything else.” 

“And you mean if there isn’t the woman, there’s nothing?” 
said Gerald. 

“Pretty well that—seeing there’s no God.” 

“Then we’re hard put to it,” said Gerald. And he turned 
to look out of the window at the flying, golden landscape. 

Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his 
face was, with a certain courage to be indifferent. 

“You think it’s heavy odds against us?” said Birkin. 

“Tf we’ve got to make our life up out of a woman, one 
woman, woman only, yes, I do,” said Gerald. “I don’t believe 
I shall ever make up my life, at that rate.” 

Birkin watched him almost angrily. 

“You are a born unbeliever,” he said. 

“T only feel what I feel,” said Gerald. And he looked again 
at Birkin almost sardonically, with his blue, manly, sharp- 
lighted eyes. Birkin’s eyes were at the moment full of anger. 
But swiftly they became troubled, doubtful, then full of a 
warm, rich affectionateness and laughter. 

“It troubles me very much, Gerald,” he said, icone his 
brows. 

“T can see it does,” said Gerald, uncovering his mouth in a 
manly, quick, soldierly laugh. 


IN THE TRAIN 65 


Gerald was held unconsciously by the other man. He wanted 
to be near him, he wanted to be within his sphere of influence. 
There was something very congenial to him in Birkin. But 
yet, beyond this, he did not take much notice. He felt that 
he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than 
any the other man knew. He felt himself older, more know- 
ing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and bril- 
liant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich 
play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. 
The real content of the words he never really considered: he 
himself knew better. 

Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be fond 
of him without taking him seriously. And this made him go 
hard and cold. As the train ran on, he sat looking at the land, 
and Gerald fell away, became as nothing to him. 

Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: 
“Well, if mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like 
Sodom, and there is this beautiful evening with the luminous 
land and trees, I am satisfied. That which informs it all is 
there, and can never be lost. After all, what is mankind but 
just one expression of the incomprehensible. And if mankind 
passes away, it will only mean that this particular expression 
is completed and done. That which is expressed, and that 
which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished. There it is, in 
the shining evening. Let mankind pass away—time it did. 
The creative utterances will not cease, they will only be there. 
Humanity doesn’t embody the utterance of the incomprehen- 
sible any more. Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a 
new embodiment, in a new way. Let humanity disappear as 
quick as possible.” 

Gerald interrupted him by asking: 

“Where are you staying in London?” 

Birkin looked up. 

“With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and 
stop there when I like.” 


“Good idea—have a place more or less your own,” said 
Gerald. 


66 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Yes. But I don’t care for it much. I’m tired of the people 
I am bound to find there.” 

“What kind of people?” 

‘“‘Art—music—London Bohemia—the most pettifogging cal- 
culating Bohemia that ever reckoned its pennies. But there 
are a few decent people, decent in some respects. They are 
really very thorough rejecters of the world—perhaps they live 
only in the gesture of rejection and negation—but negatively 
something, at any rate.” 

“What are they?—painters, musicians?” 

“Painters, musicians, writers—hangers-on, models, advanced 
young people, anybody who is openly at outs with the conven- 
tions, and belongs to nowhere particularly. They are often 
young fellows down from the University, and girls who are 
living their own lives, as they say.” 

“All loose?” said Gerald. 

Birkin could see his curiosity roused. 

“In one way. Most bound, in’another. For all their shock- 
ingness, all on one note.” 

He looked at Gerald,-and saw how his blue eyes were lit up 
with a little flame of curious desire. He saw too how good- 
looking he was. Gerald was attractive, his blood seemed fluid 
and electric. His blue eyes burned with a keen, yet cold light, 
there was a certain beauty, a beautiful passivity in all his 
body, his moulding. 

“We might see something of each other—I am in London 
for two or three days,” said Gerald. 

“Yes,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to go to the theatre, or 
the music hall—you’d better come round to the flat, and see 
what you can make of Halliday and his crowd.” 

“Thanks—TI should like to,” laughed Gerald. “What are 
you doing to-night?” | 

“TI promised to meet Halliday at the Pompadour. It’s a bad 
place, but there is nowhere else.” . 

“Where is it?” asked Gerald. 

“Piccadilly Circus.” 

“Oh yes—well, shall I come round there?” 

“By all means, it might amuse you.” 


IN THE TRAIN 67 


The evening was falling. They had passed Bedford. Birkin 
watched the country, and was filled with a sort of hopelessness. 
He always felt this, on approaching London. His dislike of 
mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an 
illness. 


“Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles 
Miles and miles—’” 


he was murmuring to himself, like a man condemned to death. 
Gerald, who was very subtly alert, wary in all his senses, leaned 
forward and asked smilingly: 

“What were you saying?” Birkin glanced at him, laughed, 
and repeated: 


“Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles, 
Miles and miles, 
Over pastures where the something something sheep 
Half asleep—’ ” 


Gerald also looked now at the country. And Birkin, who, 
for some reason was now tired and dispirited, said to him: 

“TI always feel doomed when the train is running into Lon- 
don. I feel such a despair, so hopeless, as if it were the end 
of the world.” 

“Really!” said Gerald. “And does the end of the world 
frighten you?” 

Birkin lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug. 

“TI don’t know,” he said. “It does while it hangs imminent 
and doesn’t fall. But people give me a bad feeling—very bad.” 

There was a roused glad smile in Gerald’s eyes. 

“Do they?” he said. And he watched the other man crit- 
ically. 

In a few minutes the train was running through the disgrace 
of outspread London. Everybody in the carriage was on the 
alert, waiting to escape. At last they were under the huge 
arch of the station, in the tremendous shadow of the town. 
Birkin shut himself together—he was in now. 

The two men went together in a taxi-cab. 


68 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Don’t you feel like one of the damned?” asked Birkin, as 
they sat in a little, swiftly-running enclosure, and watched the 
hideous great street. 

“No,” laughed Gerald. 

“Tt is real death,” said Birkin. 


CHAPTER VI 
CREME DE MENTHE 


THEY met again in the café several hours later. Gerald went 
through the push doors into the large, lofty room where the 
faces and heads of the drinkers showed dimly through the haze 
of smoke, reflected more dimly, and repeated ad infinitum in 
the great mirrors on the walls, so that one seemed to enter a 
vague, dim world of shadowy drinkers humming within an at- 
mosphere of blue tobacco smoke. There was, however, the 
red plush of the seats to give substance within the bubble of 
pleasure. 

Gerald moved in his slow, observant, glistening-attentive 
motion down between the tables and the people whose shadowy 
faces looked up as he passed. He seemed to be entering in 
some strange element, passing into an illuminated new region, 
among a host of licentious souls. He was pleased, and enter- 
tained. He looked over all the dim, evanescent, strangely illu- 
minated faces that bent across the tables. Then he saw Birkin 
rise and signal to him. q 

At Birkin’s table was a girl with dark, soft, fluffy hair cut 
short in the artist fashion, hanging level and full almost like 
the Egyptian princess’s. She was small and delicately made 
with warm colouring and large, dark hostile eyes. There was 
a delicacy, almost a beauty in all her form, and at the same 
time a certain attractive grossness of spirit, that made a little 
spark leap instantly alight in Gerald’s eyes. 

Birkin, who looked muted, unreal, his presence left out, in- 
troduced her as Miss Darrington. She gave her hand with a 
sudden, unwilling movement, looking all the while at Gerald 
with a dark, exposed stare. A glow came over him as he sat 
down. 

69 


7o WOMEN IN LOVE 


The waiter appeared. Gerald glanced at the glasses of the 
other two. Birkin was drinking something green, Miss Dar- 
rington had a small liqueur glass that was empty save for a 
tiny drop. 

“Won’t you have some more—?” 

“Brandy,” she said, sipping her last drop and putting down 
the glass. The waiter disappeared. 

“No,” she said to Birkin. “He doesn’t know I’m back. He'll 
be terwified when he sees me here.” 

She spoke her r’s like w’s, lisping with a slightly babyish pro- 
nunciation which was at once affected and true to her char- 
acter. Her voice was dull and toneless. 

“Where is he then?” asked Birkin. 

“He’s doing a private show at Lady Snellgrove’s,” said the 
girl. “Warrens is there too.” 

There was a pause. 

“Well, then,” said Birkin, in a dispassionate protective 1 man- 
ner, “what do you intend to do?” 

The girl paused sullenly. She hated the question. 

“T don’t intend to do anything,” she replied. “TI shall look 
for some sittings to-morrow.” 

“Who shall you go to?” asked Birkin. 

“T shall go to Bentley’ s first. But I believe he’s angwy with 
me for running away.” 

“That is from the Madonna?” 

“Ves. And then if he doesn’t want me, I know I can get 
work with Carmarthen.” 

“Carmarthen?” 

“Lord Carmarthen—he does photographs.” 

“Chiffon and shoulders—” 

“Ves. But he’s awfully decent.” ‘There was a pause. 

“And what are you going to do about Julius?” he asked. 

“Nothing,” she said. “I shall just ignore him.” 

“You’ve done with him altogether?” But she turned aside 
her face sullenly, and did not answer the question. 

Another young man came hurrying up to the table. 

“Hallo Birkin! Hallo Pussum, when did you come back?” 


he said eagerly. 


ie a oe 


7 


Ae. 


ne re a 


es 


CREME DE MENTHE nt 


“To-day.” 

“Does Halliday know?” 

“T don’t know. I don’t care either.” 

“Ha-ha! The wind still sits in that quarter, does it? Do 
you mind if I come over to this table?” 

“T’m talking to Wupert, do you mind?” she replied, coolly 
and yet appealingly, like a child. 

“Open confession—good for the soul, eh?” said the young 
man. “Well, so long.” 

And giving a sharp look at Birkin and at Gerald, the young 
man moved off, with a swing of his coat skirts. 

All this time Gerald had been completely ignored. And yet 
he felt that the girl was physically aware of his proximity. 
He waited, listened, and tried to piece together the con- 
versation. : 

“Are you staying at the flat?” the girl asked, of Birkin. 

“For three days,” replied Birkin. “And you?” 

“T don’t know yet. I can always go to Bertha’s.” There 
was a silence. : 

Suddenly the girl turned to Gerald, and said, in a rather 
formal, polite voice, with the distant manner of a woman who 
accepts her position as a social inferior, yet assumes intimate 
camaraderie with the male she addresses: 

“Do you know London well?” 

“T can hardly say,” he laughed. “I’ve been up a good 
many times, but I was never in this place before.” 

“You're not an artist, then?” she said, in a tone that placed 
him an outsider. 

“No,” he replied. 

“He’s a soldier, and an explorer, and a Napoleon of indus- 
try,” said Birkin, giving Gerald his credentials for Bohemia. 

“Are you a soldier?” asked the girl, with a cold yet lively 
curiosity. 

“No, I resigned my commission,” said Gerald, “some 
years ago.” 

“He was in the last war,” said Birkin. 

“Were you really?” said the girl. 


72 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“And then he explored the Amazon,” said Birkin, “and now 
he is ruling over coal-mines.”’ 

The girl looked at Gerald with steady, calm curiosity. He 
laughed, hearing himself described. He felt proud too, full of 
male strength. His blue, keen eyes were lit up with laughter, 
his ruddy face, with its sharp fair hair, was full of satisfaction, 
and glowing with life. He piqued her. 

“How long are you staying?” she asked him. 

“A day or two,” he replied. “But there is no particular 
hurry.” 

Still she stared into his face with that slow, full gaze which 
was so curious and so exciting to him. He was acutely and 
delightfully conscious of himself, of his own attractiveness. He 
felt full of strength, able to give off a sort of electric power. 
And he was aware of her dark, hot-looking eyes upon him. 
She had beautiful eyes, dark, fully-opened, hot, naked in their 
looking at him. And on them there seemed to float a film of 
disintegration, a sort of misery and sullenness, like oil and 
water. She wore no hat in the heated café, her loose, simple 
jumper was strung on a string round her neck. But it was 
made of rich peach-coloured crépe-de-chine, that hung heavily 
and softly from her young throat and her slender wrists. Her 
appearance was simple and complete, really beautiful, because 
of her regularity and form, her soft dark hair falling full and 
level on either side of her head, her straight, small, softened 
features, Egyptian in the slight fulness of their curves, her 
slender neck and the simple, rich-coloured smock hanging on 
her slender shoulders. She was very still, almost null, in her 
manner, apart and watchful. 

She appealed to Gerald strongly. He felt an awful, enjoy- 
able power over her, an instinctive cherishing very near to 
cruelty. For she was a victim. He felt that she was in his 
power, and he was generous. ‘The electricity was turgid and 
voluptuously rich, in his limbs. He would be able to destroy 
her utterly in the strength of his discharge. But she was wait- 
ing in her separation, given. 

They talked banalities for some time. Suddenly Birkin said: 

“There’s Julius!” and he half rose to his feet, motioning to 


CREME DE MENTHE 73 


the newcomer. The girl, with a curious, almost evil motion, 
looked round over her shoulder without moving her body. Ger- 
ald watched her dark, soft hair swing over her ears. He felt 
her watching intensely the man who was approaching, so he 
looked too. He saw a pale, full-built young man with rather 
long, solid fair hair hanging from under his black hat, moving 
cumbrously down the room, his face lit up with a smile at 
once naive and warm, and vapid. He approached towards 
Birkin, with a haste of welcome. 

It was not till he was quite close that he perceived the girl. 
He recoiled, went pale, and said, in a high squealing voice: 

“Pussum, what are you doing here?” 

The café looked up like animals when they hear a cry. Hal- 
liday hung motionless, an almost imbecile smile flickering 
palely, on his face. The girl only stared at him with a black 
look in which flared an unfathomable hell of knowledge, and 
a certain impotence. She was limited by him. 

“Why have you come back?” repeated Halliday, in the same 
high, hysterical voice. “I told you not to come back.” 

The girl did not answer, only stared in the same viscous, 
heavy fashion, straight at him, as he stood recoiled, as if for 
safety, against the next table. 

“You know you wanted her to come back—come and sit 
down,” said Birkin to him. 

“No I didn’t want her to come back, and I told her not 
to come back. What have you come for, Pussum?” 

“For nothing from you,’ she said in a heavy voice of 
resentment. 

“Then why have you come back at all?” cried Halliday, his 
voice rising to a kind of squeal. 

“She comes as she likes,” said Birkin. “Are you going to 
sit down, or are you not?” 

“No, I won’t sit down with Pussum,” cried Halliday. 

“T won’t hurt you, you needn’t be afraid,” she said to him, 
very curtly, and yet with a sort of protectiveness towards him, 
in her voice. 

Halliday came and sat at the table, putting his hand on his 
heart, and crying: 


74 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Oh, it’s given me such a turn! Pussum, I wish you wouldn’t 
do these things. Why did you come back?” 

“Not for anything from you,” she repeated. 

“You’ve said that before,” he cried in a high voice. 

She turned completely away from him, to Gerald Crich, 
whose eyes were shining with a subtle amusement. 

“Were you ever vewy much afwaid of the savages?” she 
asked in her calm, dull childish voice. 

“‘No—never very much afraid. On the whole they’re harm- 
less—they’re not born yet, you can’t feel really afraid of them. 
You know you can manage them.” 

“Do you weally? Aren’t they vewy fierce?” 

“Not very. There aren’t many fierce things, as a matter of 
fact. There aren’t many things, neither people nor animals, 
that have it in them to be really dangerous.” 

“Except in herds,” interrupted Birkin. 

“Aren’t there weally?” she said. “Oh, I thought savages 
were all so dangerous, they’d have your life before you could 
look round.” 

“Did you?” he laughed. “They are over-rated, savages. 
They’re too much like other people, not exciting, after the first 
acquaintance.” 

“Oh, it’s not so very wonderfully brave then, to be an 
explorer?” 

“No. It’s more a question of hardships than of terrors.” 

“Oh! And weren’t you ever afraid?” 

“In my life? I don’t know. Yes, I’m afraid of some things 
—of being shut up, locked up anywhere—or being fastened. 
I’m afraid of being bound hand and foot.” 

She looked at him steadily with her dark eyes, that rested 
on him and roused him so deeply, that it left his upper self 
quite calm. It was rather delicious, to feel her drawing his 
self-revelations from him, as from the very innermost dark 
marrow of his body. -She wanted to know. And her dark 
eyes seemed to be looking through into his naked 6rganism. 
He felt, she was compelled to him, she was fated to come 
into contact with him, must have the seeing him and know- 
ing him. And this roused a curious exultance. Also he felt, 


CREME DE MENTHE 75 


she must relinquish herself into his hands, and be subject to 
him. She was so profane, slave-like, watching him, absorbed 
by him. It was not that she was interested in what he said; 
she was absorbed by his self-revelation, by Aim, she wanted the 
secret of him, the experience of his male being. 

Gerald’s face was lit up with an uncanny smile, full of light 
and rousedness, yet unconscious. He sat with his arms on the 
table, his sun-browned, rather sinister hands, that were animal 
and yet very shapely and attractive, pushed forward towards 
her. And they fascinated her. And she knew, she watched 
her own fascination. 

Other men had come to the table, to talk with Birkin and 
Halliday. Gerald said, in a low voice, apart, to Pussum: 

“Where have you come back from?” 

“From the country,” replied Pussum, in a very low, yet 
fully resonant voice. Her face closed hard. Continually she 
glanced at Halliday, and then a black flare came over her eyes. 
The heavy, fair young man ignored her completely; he was 
really afraid of her. For some moments she would be un- 
aware of Gerald. He had not conquered her yet. 

“And what has Halliday to do with it?” he asked, his voice 
still muted. 

She would not answer for some seconds. Then she said, 
unwillingly: 

“He made me go and live with him, and now he wants to 
throw me over. And yet he won’t let me go to anybody else. 
He wants me to live hidden in the country. And then he says 
I persecute him, that he can’t get rid of me.” 

“Doesn’t know his own mind,” said Gerald. 

“He hasn’t any mind, so he can’t know it,” she said. “He 
waits for what somebody tells him to do. He never does any- 
thing he wants to do himself—because he doesn’t know what 
he wants. He’s a perfect baby.” 

Gerald looked at Halliday for some moments, watching the 
soft, rather degenerate face of the young man. Its very soft- 
ness was an attraction; it was a soft, warm, corrupt nature, 
into which one might plunge with gratification. 

“But he has no hold over you, has he?” Gerald asked. 


76 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“You see he made me go and live with him, when I didn’t 
want to,” she replied. ‘He came and cried to me, tears, you 
never saw so many, saying he couldn’t bear it unless I went 
back to him. And he wouldn’t go away, he would have stayed 
for ever. He made me go back. Then every time he behaves 
in this fashion. And now I’m going to have a baby, he wants 
to give me a hundred pounds and send me into the country, 
so that he would never see me nor hear of me again. But I’m 
not going to do it, after—” 

A queer look came over Gerald’s face. 

“Are you going to have a child?” he asked incredulous. It 
seemed, to look at her, impossible, she was so young and so 
far in spirit from any childbearing. 

She looked full into his face, and her dark, inchoate eyes 
had now a furtive look, and a look of a knowledge of evil, dark 
and indomitable. A flame ran secretly to his heart. 

“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t it beastly?” 

“Don’t you want it??” he asked. 

“T don’t,” she replied emphatically. 

“But—” he said, “how long have you known?” 

“Ten weeks,” she said. 

All the time she kept her dark, inchoate eyes full upon him. 
He remained silent, thinking. Then, switching off and be- 
coming cold, he asked, in a voice full of considerate kindness: 

“Ts there anything we can eat here? Is there anything you 
would like?” 

“Yes,” she said, “I should adore some oysters.” 

“All right,” he said. “We’ll have oysters.” And he beckoned 
to the waiter. 

Halliday took no notice, until the little plate was set before 
her. Then suddenly he cried: 

“Pussum, you can’t eat oysters when you're drinking 
brandy.” 

“What has it got to do with you?” she asked. 

“Nothing, nothing,” he cried. “But you can’t eat oysters 
when you’re drinking brandy.” 

“I’m not drinking brandy,” she replied, and she sprinkled 


CREME DE MENTHE 77 


the last drops of her liqueur over his face. He gave an odd 
squeal. She sat looking at him, as if indifferent. 

“Pussum, why do you do that?” he cried in panic. He gave 
Gerald the impression that he was terrified of her, and that 
he loved his terror. He seemed to relish his own horror and 
hatred of her, turn it over and extract every flavour from it, 
in real panic. Gerald thought him a strange fool, and yet 
piquant. 

“But Pussum,” said another man, in a very small, quick 
Eton voice, “you promised not to hurt him.” 

“T haven’t hurt him,” she answered. 

“What will you drink?” the young man asked. He was 
dark, and smooth-skinned, and full of a stealthy vigour. 

“T don’t like porter, Maxim,” she replied. 

‘You must ask for champagne,” came the whispering, gentle- 
manly voice of the other. 

Gerald suddenly realised that this was a hint to him. 

“Shall we have champagne?” he asked, laughing. 

“Ves please, dwy,” she lisped childishly. 

Gerald watched her eating the oysters. She was delicate 
and finicking in her eating, her fingers were fine and seemed 
very sensitive in the tips, so she put her food apart with fine, 
small motions, she ate carefully, delicately. It pleased him 
very much to see her, and it irritated Birkin. They were all 
drinking champagne. Maxim, the prim young Russian with 
the smooth, warm-coloured face and black, oiled hair was the 
only one who seemed to be perfectly calm and sober. Birkin 
was white and abstract, unnatural, Gerald was smiling with a 
constant bright, amused, cold light in his eyes, leaning a little 
protectively towards the Pussum, who was very handsome, and 
soft, unfolded like some red lotus in dreadful flowering naked- 
ness, vainglorious now, flushed with wine and with the excite- 
ment of men. Halliday looked foolish. One glass of wine was 
enough to make him drunk and giggling. Yet there was always 
a pleasant, warm naiveté about him, that made him attractive. 

“T’m not afwaid of anything except black-beetles,” said the 
Pussum, looking up. suddenly and staring with her black eyes, 
on which there seemed an unseeing film of flame, fully upon 


78 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gerald. He laughed dangerously, from the blood. Her child- 
ish speech caressed his nerves, and her burning, filmed eyes, 
turned now full upon him, oblivious of all her antecedents, 
gave him a sort of licence. 

“I’m not,” she protested. “I’m not afraid of other things. 
But black-beetles—ugh!” she shuddered convulsively, as if the 
very thought were too much to bear. 

“Do you mean,” said Gerald, with the punctiliousness of a 
man who has been drinking, “that you are afraid of the sight 
of a black-beetle, or you are afraid of a black-beetle biting 
you, or doing your some harm?” 

“Do they bite?” cried the girl. 

“How perfectly loathsome!” exclaimed Halliday. 

“T don’t know,” replied Gerald, looking round the. table. 
“Do black-beetles bite? But that isn’t the point. Are you 
afraid of their biting, or is it a metaphysical antipathy?” 

The girl was looking full upon him all the time with inchoate 
eyes. 

“Oh, I think they’re beastly, they’re horrid,” she cried. 
“Tf I see one, it gives me the creeps all over. If one were to 
crawl on me, I’m sure I should die—I’m sure I should.” 

“T hope not,” whispered the young Russian. 

“T’m sure I should, Maxim,” she asseverated. 

“Then one won’t crawl on you,” said Gerald, smiling and 
knowing. In some strange way he understood her. 

“It’s metaphysical, as Gerald says,” Birkin stated. 

There was a little pause of uneasiness. 

“And are you afraid of nothing else, Pussum?” asked the 
young Russian, in his quick, hushed, elegant manner. 

“Not weally,” she said. “I am afwaid of some things, but 
not weally the same. I’m not afwaid of blood.” 

“Not afwaid of blood!” exclaimed a young man with a thick, 
pale, jeering face, who had just come to the table and was 
drinking whisky. 

The Pussum turned on him a sulky look of dislike, low 
and ugly. 

“Aren’t you really afraid of blud?” the other persisted, a 
sneer all over his face. 


CREME DE MENTHE 79 


“No, I’m not,” she retorted. 

“Why, have you ever seen blood, except in a dentist’s spit- 
toon?” jeered the young man. 

“T wasn’t speaking to you,” she replied rather superbly. 

“You can answer me, can’t you?” he said. 

For reply, she suddenly jabbed a knife across his thick, pale 
hand. He started up with a vulgar curse. 

“Show’s what you are,” said the Pussum in contempt. 

“Curse you,” said the young man, standing by the table 
and looking down at her with acrid malevolence. 

“Stop that,” said Gerald, in quick, instinctive command. 

The young man stood looking down at her with sardonic 
contempt, a cowed, self-conscious look on his thick, pale face. 
The blood began to flow from his hand. 

“Oh, how horrible, take it away!” squealed Halliday, turn- 
ing green and averting his face. 

“T)’you feel ill?” asked the sardonic young man, in some 
concern. “Do you feel ill, Julius? Garn, it’s nothing, man, 
don’t give her the pleasure of letting her think she’s performed 
a feat—don’t give her the satisfaction, man—it’s just what 
she wants.” 

“Oh!” squealed Halliday. 

“He’s going to cat, Maxim,” said the Pussum warningly. 
The suave young Russian rose and took Halliday by the arm, 
leading him away. Birkin, white and diminished, looked on 
as if he were displeased. The wounded, sardonic young man 
moved away, ignoring his bleeding hand in the most conspic- 
uous fashion. 

“He’s an awful coward, really,” said the Pussum to Gerald. 
‘“‘He’s got such an influence over Julius.” 

“Who is he?” asked Gerald. 

“He’s a Jew, really. I can’t bear him.” 

“Well, he’s quite unimportant. But what’s wrong with © 
Halliday?” 

“Tulius’s the most awful coward you’ve ever seen,” she cried. 
‘He always faints if I lift a knife—he’s tewwified of me.” 

“H’m!” said Gerald. 

“They’re all afwaid of me,” she said. “Only the Jew thinks 


80 WOMEN IN LOVE 


he’s going to show his courage. But he’s the biggest coward 
of them all, really, because he’s afwaid what people will think 
about him—and Julius doesn’t care about that.” 

“They’ve a lot of valour between them,” said Gerald good- 
humouredly. 

The Pussum looked at him with a slow, slow smile. She was 
very handsome, flushed, and confident in dreadful knowledge. 
Two little points of light glinted on Gerald’s eyes. 

“Why do they call you Pussum, because you’re like a cat??” 
he asked her. 

“T expect so,” she said. 

The smile grew more intense on his face. 

“You are, rather;—or a young, female panther.” 

“Oh God, Gerald!” said Birkin, in some disgust. 

They both looked uneasily at Birkin. 

“You're silent to-night, Wupert,” she said to him, with a 
slight insolence, being safe with the other man. | 

Halliday was coming back, looking forlorn and sick. 

“Pussum,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t do these things— 
Oh!” He sank in his chair with a groan. 

“You’d better go home,” she said to him. 

“T will go home,” he said. “But won’t you all come along. 
Won’t you. come round to the flat?” he said to Gerald. “I 
should be so glad if you would. Do—that’ll be splendid. I 
say?” He looked round for a waiter. “Get me a taxi.” Then 
he groaned again. “Oh I se Semhergerticely ghastly! Pussum, 
you see what you do to me.’ 

“Then why are you such an idiot?” she said with sullen calm. 

“But I’m not an idiot! Oh, how awful! Do come, every- 
body, it will be so splendid. Pussum, you are coming. What? 
Oh but you must come, yes, you must. What? Oh, my dear 
girl, don’t make a fuss now, I feel perfectly—Oh, it’s so 
ghastly— Ho!—er! Oh!” 

“You know you can’t drink,” she said to him, coldly. 

“I tell you it isn’t drink—it’s your disgusting behaviour, 
Pussum, it’s nothing else. Oh, how awful! Libidnikov, do 
let us go.” 


CREME DE MENTHE Sr 


“He’s only drunk one glass—only one glass,” came the 
rapid, hushed voice of the young Russian. 

They all moved off to the door. The girl kept near to 
Gerald, and seemed to be at one in her motion with him. He 
was aware of this, and filled with demon-satisfaction that this 
motion held good for two. He held her in the hollow of his 
will, and she was soft, secret, invisible in her stirring there. 

They crowded five of them into the taxi-cab. Halliday 
lurched in first, and dropped into his seat against the other 
window. ‘Then the Pussum took her place, and Gerald sat 
next to her. They heard the young Russian giving orders to 
the driver, then they were all seated in the dark, crowded close 
together, Halliday groaning and leaning out of the window. 
They felt the swift, muffled motion of the car. | 

The Pussum sat near to Gerald, and she seemed to become 
soft, subtly to infuse herself into his bones, as if she were 
passing into him in a black, electric flow. Her being suffused 
into his veins like a magnetic darkness, and concentrated at 
the base of his spine like a fearful source of power. Meanwhile 
her voice sounded out reedy and nonchalant, as she talked 
indifferently with Birkin and with Maxim. Between her and 
Gerald was this silence and this black, electric comprehension 
in the darkness. Then she found his hand, and grasped it in 
her own firm, small clasp. It was so utterly dark, and yet 
such a naked statement, that rapid vibrations ran through his 
blood and over his brain, he was no longer responsible. Still 
her voice rang on like a bell, tinged with a tone of mockery. 
And as she swung her head, her fine mane of hair just swept 
his face, and all his nerves were on fire, as with a subtle friction 
of electricity. But the great centre of his force held steady, a 
magnificent pride to him, at the base of his spine. 

They arrived at a large block of buildings, went up in a 
lift, and presently a door was being opened for them by a 
Hindu. Gerald looked in surprise, wondering if he were a 
gentleman, one of the Hindus down from Oxford, perhaps. 
But no, he was the man-servant. 

“Make tea, Hasan,” said Halliday. 

“There is a room for me?” said Birkin. 


82 WOMEN IN LOVE 


To both of which questions the man grinned, and murmured. 

He made Gerald uncertain, because, being tall and slender 
and reticent, he looked like a gentleman. 

“Who is your servant?” he asked of Halliday. “He looks 
a swell.” | 

“Oh yes—that’s because he’s dressed in another man’s 
clothes. He’s anything but a swell, really. We found him 
in the road, starving. So I took him here, and another man 
gave him clothes. He’s anything but what he seems to be— 
his only advantage is that he can’t speak English and can’t 
understand it, so he’s perfectly safe.” 

“He’s very dirty,” said the young Russian swiftly and 
silently. 

Directly, the man appeared in the doorway. 

“What is it?” said Halliday. 

The Hindu grinned, and murmured shyly: 

“Want to speak to master.” 

Gerald watched curiously. The fellow in the abaie wish was 
good-looking and clean-limbed, his bearing was calm, he looked 
elegant, aristocratic. Yet he was half a savage, grinning fool- 
ishly. Halliday went out into the corridor to speak with him. 

“What?” they heard his voice. “What? What do you 
say? Tell me again. What? Want money? Want more 
money? But what do you want money for?” There was the 
confused sound of the Hindu’s talking, then Halliday appeared 
in the room, smiling also foolishly, and saying: 

“He says he wants money to buy underclothing. Can any- 
body lend me a shilling? Oh thanks, a shilling will do to buy 
all the underclothes he wants.” He took the money from 
Gerald and went out into the passage again, where they heard 
him saying, “You can’t want more money, you had three and 
six yesterday. You mustn’t ask for any more. Bring the tea 
in quickly.” 

Gerald looked round the room. It was an ordinary London 
sitting-room in a flat, evidently taken furnished, rather com- . 
mon and ugly. But there were several negro statues, wood- 
carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing, the carved 
negroes looked almost like the foetus of a human being. One 


CREME DE MENTHE 83 


was a woman sitting naked in a strange posture, and looking 
tortured, her abdomen stuck out. The young Russian ex- 
plained that she was sitting in child-birth, clutching the ends 
of the band that hung from her neck, one in each hand, so 
that she could bear down, and help labour. The strange, 
transfixed, rudimentary face of the woman again reminded 
Gerald of a foetus, it was also rather wonderful, conveying the 
suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation, beyond the 
limits of mental consciousness. 

“Aren’t they rather obscene?” he asked, disapproving. 

“T don’t know,” murmured the other rapidly. “I have never 
defined the obscene. I think they are very good.” 

Gerald turned away. There were one or two new pictures 
in the room, in the Futurist manner; there was a large piano. 
And these, with some ordinary London ied anda furniture 
of the better sort, completed the whole. 

The Pussum had taken off her hat and coat, and was seated 
on the sofa. She was evidently quite at home in the house, 
but uncertain, suspended. She did not quite know her posi- 
tion. Her alliance for the time being was with Gerald, and 
she did not know how far this was admitted by any of the 
men. She was considering how she should carry off the situa- 
tion. She was determined to have her experience. Now, at 
this eleventh hour, she was not to be baulked. Her face was 
flushed as with battle, her eye was brooding but inevitable. 

The man came in with tea and a bottle of Kimmel. He 
set the tray on a little table before the couch. 

“Pussum,” said Halliday, “pour out the tea.” 

She did not move. 

“Won’t you do it?” Halliday repeated, in a state of nervous 
apprehension. 

“T’ve not come back here as it was before,” she said. “I only 
came because the others wanted me to, not for your sake.” 

“My dear Pussum, you know you are your own mistress: I 
don’t want you to do anything but use the flat for your own 
convenience—you know it, I’ve told you so many times.” 

She did not reply, but ‘silently, reservedly reached for the 
tea-pot. They all sat round and drank tea. Gerald could 


84 WOMEN IN LOVE 


feel the electric connection between him and her so strongly, 
as she sat there quiet and withheld, that another set of con- 
ditions altogether had come to pass. Her silence and her 
immutability perplexed him. How was he going to come to 
her? And yet he felt it quite inevitable. He trusted com- 
pletely to the current that held them. His perplexity was 
only superficial, new conditions reigned, the old were sur- 
passed; here one did as one was possessed to do, no matter 
what it was. | 

Birkin rose. It was nearly one o’clock. 

“T’m going to bed,” he said. “Gerald, I'll ring you up in 
the morning at your place—or you ring me up here.” 

“Right,” said Gerald, and Birkin went out. 

When he was well gone, Halliday said in a stimulated voice, 
to Gerald: 

“T say, won’t you stay here—oh do!” 

“You can’t put everybody up,” said Gerald. 

“Oh but I can, perfectly—there are three more beds besides 
mine—do stay, won't you. Everything is quite ready—there 
is always somebody here—I always put people up—I love 
having the house crowded.” 

“But there are only two rooms,” said the Pussum, in a cold, 
hostile voice, “now Rupert’s here.” 

“Tt know there are only two rooms,” said Halliday, in his 
odd, high way of speaking. “But what does that matter?” 

He was smiling rather foolishly, and he spoke eagerly, with 
an insinuating determination. 

“Julius and I will share one room,” said the Russian in his 
discreet, precise voice. Halliday and he were friends since 
Eton. . 

“Tt’s very simple,” said Gerald, rising and pressing back 
his arms, stretching himself. Then he went again to look at 
one of the pictures. Every one of his limbs was turgid with 
electric force, and his back was tense like a tiger’s, with slum- 
bering fire. He was very proud. 

The Pussum rose. She gave a black look at Halliday, black 
and deadly, which brought the rather foolish, pleased smile to 


CREME DE MENTHE 85 


that young man’s face. Then she went out of the room, with 
a cold Good-night to them all generally. 

There was a brief interval, they heard a door close, then 
Maxim said, in his refined voice: 

“That’s all right.” 

He looked significantly at Gerald, and said again, with a 
silent nod: 

“That’s all right—you’re all right.” 

Gerald looked at the smooth, ruddy, comely face, and at 
the strange, significant eyes, and it seemed as if the voice of 
the young Russian, so small and perfect, sounded in the 
blood rather than in the air. 

“7’m all right then,” said Gerald. 

“Yes! Yes! You’re all right,” said the Russian. 

Halliday continued to smile, and to say nothing. 

Suddenly the Pussum appeared again in the door, her small, 
childish face looking sullen and vindictive. 

“TJ know you want to catch me out,” came her cold, rather 
resonant voice. “But I don’t care, I don’t care how much 
you catch me out.” | 

She turned and was gone again. She had been wearing a 
loose dressing-gown of purple silk, tied round her waist. She 
looked so small and childish and vulnerable, almost pitiful. 

And yet the black looks of her eyes made Gerald feel drowned 
in some dreadful, potent darkness that almost frightened him. 

The men lit another cigarette and talked casually. 


CHAPTER VII 
TOTEM 


In the morning Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. 
Pussum was still asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. 
There was something small and curled up and defenceless 
about her, that roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in the 
young man’s blood, a devouring avid pity. He looked at her 
again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued 
himself, and went away. 

Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talk- 
ing to Libidnikov, he went to the door and glanced in, know- 
ing he might go about in this bachelor establishment in his 
trousers and shirt. 

To his surprise he saw the two young men a the fire, stark 
naked. Halliday looked up, rather pleased. : 

“Good-morning,” he said. ‘“Oh—did you want towels?” 
And stark naked he went out into the hall, striding a strange, 
white figure between the unliving furniture. He came back 
with the towels, and took his former position, crouching seated 
before the fire on the fender. 

“Don’t you love to feel the fire on your skin?” he said. 

“Tt is rather pleasant,” said Gerald. 

“How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where 
one could do without clothing altogether,” said Halliday. 

“Ves,” said Gerald, “if there weren’t so many things that 
sting and bite.” 

“That’s a disadvantage,” murmured Maxim. 

Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the hu- 
man animal, golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. 
Halliday was different. He had a rather heavy, slack, broken 
beauty, white and firm. He was like a Christ in a Pieta. The 
animal was not there at all, only the heavy, broken beauty. 

86 


TOTEM 87 


And Gerald realised how Halliday’s eyes were beautiful too 
so blue and warm and confused, broken also in their expres 
sion. The fire-glow fell on his heavy, rather bowed shoulders, 
he sat slackly crouched on the fender, his face was uplifted. 
degenerate, perhaps slightly disintegrate, and yet with a 
moving beauty of its own. 

“Of course,” said Maxim, “you’ve been in hot countries 
where the people go about naked.” 

“Oh really!” exclaimed Halliday. ‘Where?” 

“South America—Amazon,” said Gerald. 

“Oh but how perfectly splendid! It’s one of the things I 
want most to do—to live from day to day without ever put- 
ting on any sort of clothing whatever. If I could do that, I 
should feel I had lived.” 

“But why?” said Gerald. “I can’t see that it makes so 
much difference.” 

“Oh, I think it would be perfectly splendid. I’m sure life 
would ‘be entirely another thing—entirely different, and per- 
fectly wonderful.” 

“But why?” asked Gerald. ‘Why should ite” 

“Qh—one would feel things instead of merely looking at 
them. I should feel the air move against me, and feel the 
things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. 
I’m sure life is all wrong because it has become much too 
visual—we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can 
only see. I’m sure that is entirely wrong.” 

“Ves, that is true, that is true,” said the Russian. 

Gerald glanced at him, and saw him, his suave, golden- 
coloured body with the black hair growing fine and freely, 
like tendrils, and his limbs like smooth plant-stems. He was 
so healthy and well-made, why did he make one ashamed, why 
did one feel repelled? Why should Gerald even dislike it, 
why did it seem to him to detract from his own dignity? Was 
that all a human being amounted to? So uninspired! thought 
Gerald. 

Birkin suddenly appeared in the doorway, also in a state 
of nudity, towel and sleeping suit over his arm. He was 
very narrow and white, and somehow apart. 


88 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“There’s the bath-room now, if you want it,” he said gen- 
erally, and was going away again, when Gerald called: 

“IT say, Rupert!” 

“What?” The single white figure appeared again, a pres- 
ence in the room. 

“What do you think of that figure there? I want to know,” 
Gerald asked. 

Birkin, white and strangely present, went over to the carved 
figure of the negro woman in labour. Her nude, protuberant 
body crouched in a strange, clutching posture, her hands grip- 
ping the ends of the band, above her breast. 

“Tt is art,” said Birkin. 

“Very beautiful, it’s very beautiful,” said the Russian. 

They all drew near to look. Gerald looked at the group 
of naked men, the Russian golden and like a water-plant, 
Halliday tall and heavily, brokenly beautiful, Birkin very 
white and immediate, not to be defined, as he looked closely 
at the carven woman. Strangely elated, Gerald also lifted his 
eyes to the face of the wooden figure. And his heart con- 
tracted. 

He saw vividly with his spirit the grey, forward-stretching 
face of the negro woman, African and tense, abstracted in 
utter physical stress. It was a terrible face, void, peaked, 
abstracted almost into meaninglessness by the weight of sen- 
sation beneath. He saw the Pussum in it. As in a dream, he 
knew her. 

“Why is it art?” Gerald asked, shocked, resentful. 

“It conveys a complete truth,” said Birkin. “It contains 
the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.” 

“But you can’t call it high art,” said Gerald. 

“High! There are centuries and hundreds of centuries of 
development in a straight line, behind that carving; it is an 
awful pitch of culture, of a definite sort.” 

“What culture?” Gerald asked, in opposition. He hated the 
sheer African thing. 

“Pure culture in sensation, culture in the physical con- 
sciousness, really ultimate pysical consciousness, mindless, 
utterly sensual. It is so sensual as to be final, supreme.” 


TOTEM 8y 


But Gerald resented it. He wanted to keep certain illu- 
sions, certain ideas like clothing. 

“You like the wrong things, Rupert,’ he said, “things 
against yourself.” 

“Oh, I know, this isn’t everything,” Birkin replied, mov- 
ing away. 

When Gerald went back to his room from the bath, he 
also carried his clothes. It seemed bad form in this house, 
not to go about naked. And after all, it was rather nice, there 
was a real simplicity. Still, it was rather funny, everybody 
being so deliberately nude. 

The Pussum lay in her bed, motionless, her round, dark 
eyes, like black, unhappy pools. He could only see the black, 
bottomless pools of her eyes. Perhaps she suffered. The sensa- 
tion of her inchoate suffering roused the old sharp flame in 
him, a mordant pity, a passion almost of cruelty. 

“You are awake now,” he said to her. 

“What time is it?” came her muted voice. 

She seemed to flow back, almost like liquid, from his ap- 
proach, to sink helplessly away from him. Her inchoate look 
of a violated slave, whose fulfilment lies in her further and 
further violation, made his nerves quiver with acutely desirable 
sensation. After all, his was the only will, she was the passive 
substance of his will. He tingled with the subtle, biting sen- 
sation. And then he knew, he must go away from her, there 
must be pure separation between them. 

-It was a quiet and ordinary breakfast, the four men all 
looking very clean and bathed. Gerald and the Russian were 
both correct and comme il faut in appearance and manner, 
Birkin was gaunt and sick, and looked a failure in his attempt 
to be a properly dressed man, like Gerald and Maxim. Halli- 
day wore tweeds and a green flannel shirt, and a rag of a 
tie, which was just right for him. The Hindu brought in a 
great deal of soft toast, and looked exactly the same as he 
had looked the night before, statically the same. 

At the end of the breakfast the Pussum appeared, in a 
purple silk wrap with a shimmering sash. She had recovered 
herself somewhat, but was mute and lifeless still. It was a 


90 WOMEN IN LOVE 


torment to her when anybody spoke to her. Her face was 
like a small, fine mask, sinister too, masked with unwilling 
suffering. It was almost midday. Gerald rose and went away 
to his business, glad to get out. But he had not finished. He 
was coming back again at evening, they were all dining to- 
gether, and he had booked seats for the party, excepting Birkin, 
at a music-hall. 

At night they came back to the flat very late again, again 
flushed with drink. Again the man-servant—who invariably 
disappeared between the hours of ten and twelve at night— 
came in silently and inscrutably with tea, bending in a slow, 
strange, leopard-like fashion to put the tray softly on the 
table. His face was immutable, aristocratic-looking, tinged 
slightly with grey under the skin; he was young and good- 
looking. But Birkin felt a slight sickness, looking at him, 
and feeling the slight greyness as an ash or a corruption, in 
the aristocratic inscrutability of expression, a nauseating, bes- 
tial stupidity. 

Again they talked cordially and rousedly together. But 
already a certain friability was coming over the party, Birkin 
was. mad with irritation, Halliday was turning in an insane 
hatred against Gerald, the Pussum was becoming hard and 
cold, like a flint knife, and Halliday was laying himself out 
to her. And her intention, ultimately, was to capture Halli- 
day, to have complete power over him. 

In the morning they all stalked and lounged about again. 
But Gerald could feel a strange hostility to himself, in the air. 
It roused his obstinacy, and he stood up against it. He hung 
“on for two more days. The result was a nasty and insane 
scene with Halliday on the fourth evening. Halliday turned 
with absurd animosity upon Gerald, in the café. There was 
a row. Gerald was on the point of knocking-in Halliday’s 
face; when he was filled with sudden disgust and indifference, 
and he went away, leaving Halliday in a foolish state of gloat- 
ing triumph, the Pussum hard and established, and Maxim 
standing clear. Birkin was absent, he had gone out of town 


again. 


TOTEM 91 


Gerald was piqued because he had left without giving the 
Pussum money. It was true, she did not care whether he gave 
her money or not, and he knew it. But she would have been 
glad of ten pounds, and he would have been very glad to give 
them to her. Now he felt in a false position. He went away 
chewing his lips to get at the ends of his short-clipped mous- 
tache. He knew the Pussum was merely glad to be rid of 
him. She had got her Halliday whom she wanted. She 
wanted him completely in her power. Then she would marry 
him. She wanted to marry him. She had set her will on 
marrying Halliday. She never wanted to hear of Gerald 
again; unless, perhaps, she were in difficulty; because after 
all, Gerald was what she called a man, and these others, Halli- 
day, Libidnikov, Birkin, the whole Bohemian set, they were 
only half men. But it was half men she could deal with. 
She felt sure of herself with them. The real men, like Gerald, 
put her in her place too much. 

Still, she respected Gerald, she really respected him. -She 
had managed to get his address, so that she could appeal to 
him in time of distress. She knew he wanted to give her 
money. She would perhaps write to him on that inevitable 
rainy day. | 


CHAPTER VIII 
BREADALBY 


BREADALBY was a Georgian house with Corinthian pillars, 
standing among the softer, greener hills of Derbyshire, not 
far from Cromford. In front, it looked over a lawn, over a 
few trees, down to a string of fish-ponds in the hollow of the 
silent park. At the back were trees, among which were to be 
found the stables, and the big kitchen garden, behind which 
was a wood. 

It was a very quiet place, some miles from the high-road, 
back from the Derwent Valley, outside the show scenery. 
Silent and forsaken, the golden stucco showed between the 
trees, the house-front looked down the park, unchanged and 
unchanging. 

Of late, however, Hermione had lived a good deal at the 
house. She had turned away from London, away from Oxford, 
towards the silence of the country. Her father was mostly 
absent, abroad, she was either alone in the house, with her 
visitors, of whom there were always several, or she had with 
her her brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of Parlia- 
ment. He always came down when the House was not sitting, 
seemed always to be present in Breadalby, although he was 
most conscientious in his attendance to duty. 

The summer was just coming in when Ursula and Gudrun 
went to stay the second time with Hermione. Coming along 
in the car, after they had entered the park, they looked across 
the dip, where the fish-ponds lay in silence, at the pillared front 
of the house, sunny and small like an English drawing of the 
old school, on the brow of the green hill, against the trees. 
There were small figures on the green lawn, women in lavender 
and yellow moving to the shade of the enormous, beautifully 
balanced cedar tree. 

g2 


BREADALBY 93 


“Tsn’t it complete!” said Gudrun. “It is as final as an old 
aquatint.” She spoke with some resentment in her voice, as 
if she were captivated unwillingly, as if she must admire 
against her will. : 

“Do you love it?” asked Ursula. 

“T don’t dove it, but in its way, I think it is quite complete.” 

The motor-car ran down the hill and up again in one breath, 
and they were curving to the side door. A parlour-maid ap- 
peared, and then Hermione, coming forward with her pale 
face lifted, and her hands outstretched, advancing straight to 
the new-comers, her voice singing: 

“Here you are—I’m so glad to see you—” she kissed 
Gudrun— “so glad to see you—” she kissed Ursula and re- 
mained with her arm round her. “Are you very tired?” 

“Not at all tired,” said Ursula. 

“Are you tired, Gudrun?” 

“Not at all, thanks,” said Gudrun. 

“No—” drawled Hermione. And she stood and looked at 
them. The two girls were embarrassed because she would not 
move into the house, but must have her little scene of welcome 
there on the path. The servants waited. 

“Come in,” said Hermione at last, having fully taken in 
the pair of them. Gudrun was the more beautiful and attrac- 
tive, she had decided again, Ursula was more physical, more 
womanly. She admired Gudrun’s dress more. It was of green 
poplin, with a loose coat above it, of broad, dark-green and 
dark-brown stripes. The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, 
the colour of new hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and 
orange, the stockings were dark green, the shoes black. It 
was a good get-up, at once fashionable and individual. Ursula, 
in dark blue, was more ordinary, though she also looked well. 

Hermione herself wore a dress of prune-coloured silk, with 
coral beads and coral coloured stockings. But her dress was 
both shabby and soiled, even rather dirty. 

“You would like to see your rooms now, wouldn’t you! Yes. 
We will go up now, shall we?” 

Ursula was glad when she could be left alone in her room. 
Hermione lingered so long, made such a stress on one. She 


94 WOMEN IN LOVE 


stood so near to one, pressing herself near upon one, in a way 
that was most embarrassing and oppressive. She seemed to 
hinder one’s workings. 

Lunch was served on the lawn, under the great tree, whose 
thick, blackish boughs came down close to the grass. There 
were present a young Italian woman, slight and fashionable, a 
young, athletic-looking Miss Bradley, a learned, dry Baronet 
of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at 
them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh, there was Rupert Birkin, 
and then a woman secretary, a Fraulein Marz, young and slim 
and pretty. 

The food was very good, that was one thing. Gudrun, 
critical of everything, gave it her full approval. Ursula loved 
the situation, the white table by the cedar tree, the scent of 
new sunshine, the little vision of the leafy park, with far-off 
deer feeding peacefully. There seemed a magic circle drawn 
about the place, shutting out the present, enclosing the delight- 
ful, precious past, trees and deer and silence, like a dream. 

But in spirit she was unhappy. The talk went on like a 
rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a 
sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual 
cracking of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, 
designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversa- 
tion that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation 
rather than a stream. 

The attitude was mental and very wearying. Only the 
elderly sociologist, whose mental fibre was so tough as to be 
insentient, seemed to be thoroughly happy. Birkin was down 
in the mouth. Hermione appeared, with amazing persistence, 
to wish to ridicule him and make him look ignominious in 
the eyes of everybody. And it was surprising, how she seemed 
to succeed, how helpless he seemed against her. He looked 
completely insignificant. Ursula and Gudrun, both very un- 
used, were mostly silent, listening to the slow, rhapsodic sing- 
song of Hermione, or the verbal sallies of Sir Joshua, or the 
prattle of Fraulein, or the responses of the other two women. 

Luncheon was over, coffee was brought out on the grass, 
the party left the table and sat about in lounge chairs, in the 


BREADALBY 95 


shade or in the sunshine as they wished. Fraulein departed 
into the house, Hermione took up her embroidery, the little 
Contessa took a book, Miss Bradley was weaving a basket out 
of fine grass, and there they all were on the lawn in the early 
summer afternoon, working leisurely and spattering with half- 
intellectual, deliberate talk. , 

Suddenly there was the sound of the brakes and the shut- 
ting off of a motor-car. 

“There’s Salsie!” sang Hermione, in her slow, amusing sing- 
song. And laying down her work, she rose slowly, and slowly 
passed over the lawn, round the bushes, out of sight. 

“Who is it?” asked Gudrun. 

“Mr. Roddice—Miss Roddice’s brother—at least, I sup- 
pose it’s he,” said Sir Joshua. 

“Salsie, yes, it is her brother,” said the little Countess, lift- 
ing her head for a moment from her book, and speaking as if 
to give information, in her slightly deepened, guttural English. 

They all waited. And then round the bushes came the tall 
form of Alexander Roddice, striding romantically like a Mere- 
dith hero who remembers Disraeli. He was cordial with every- 
body, he was at once a host, with an easy, off-hand hospitality 
that he had learned for Hermione’s friends. He had just come 
down from London, from the House. At once the atmosphere 
of the House of Commons made itself felt over the lawn: the 
Home Secretary had said such and such a thing, and he, 
Roddice, on the other hand, thought such and such a thing. 
and had said so-and-so to the P.M, 

Now Hermione came round the bushes with: Gerald Crich. 
He had come along with Alexander. Gerald was presented to 
everybody, was kept by Hermione for a few moments in full 
view, then he was led away, still by Hermione. He was evi- 
dently her guest of the moment. 

There had been a split in the Cabinet; the Minister for 
Education had resigned owing to adverse criticism. This 
started a conversation on education. 

“Of course,” said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapso- 
dist, ‘there can be no reason, no excuse for education, except 
the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.” She seemed to 


96 WOMEN IN LOVE 


rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, 
then she proceeded: ‘Vocational education isn’t education, it 
is the close of education.” 

Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with de- 
light and prepared for action. 

“Not necessarily,” he said. “But isn’t education really like 
gymnastics, isn’t the end of education the ginteigsate, of a well- 
trained, vigorous, energetic mind?” 

“Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for any- 
thing,” cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord. 

Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing. 

“Well—” rumbled Hermione, “I don’t know. To me the 
pleasure of knowing is so great, so wonderful—nothing has 
meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge—no, I 
am sure—nothing.” 

“What knowledge, for example, Hermione?” asked Alex- 
ander. 

Hermione lifted her face and rumbled— 


“M—m-—m—I don’t know. .... But one thing was the 
stars, when I really understood something about the stars. 
One feels so uplifted, so unbounded ...... ” 


Birkin looked at her in a white fury. 

“What do you want to feel unbounded for?” he said sar- 
castically. “You don’t want to be unbounded.” 

Hermione recoiled in offence. 

“Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,” said Gerald. 
“It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the 
Pacific.” 

“Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,” murmured the Italian, 
lifting her face for a moment from her book. 

“Not necessarily in Darien,” said Gerald, while Ursula 
began to laugh. 

Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, 
untouched: 

“Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to know. It is onli 
to be happy, to be free.” 

“Knowledge is, of course, liberty,” said Malleson. 

“In compressed tabloids,” said Birkin, looking at the dry, 


BREADALBY 97 


stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the 
famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of com- 
pressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and 
placed forever in her mind. 

“What does that mean, Rupert?” sang Hermione, in a 
calm snub. 

“You can only have knowledge, strictly,” he replied, “of 
things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of 
last summer in the bottled gooseberries.” 

“Can one have knowledge only of the past?” asked the 
Baronet, pointedly. “Could we call our knowledge of the 
laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?” 

“Ves,” said Birkin. 

“There is a most beautiful thing in my book,” suddenly piped 
the little Italian woman. “It says the man came to the door 
and threw his eyes down the street.” 

There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley 
went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa. 

“See!” said the Contessa. 

“Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly 
down the street,” she read. 

Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which 
was the Baronet’s, which rattled out like a clatter of falling 
stones. 

“What is the book?” asked Alexander, promptly. 

“Fathers and Sons,’ by Turgenev,” said the little foreigner, 
pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, 
to verify herself. 

“An old American edition,” said Birkin. 

“Ha!—of course—translated from the French,” said Alex- — 
ander, with a fine declamatory voice. ‘“Bazarov ouvra la porte 
et jeta les yeux dans la rue.” 

He looked brightly round the company. 

“I wonder what the ‘hurriedly’ was,” said Ursula. 

They all began to guess. 

And then, to the amazement of everybody, the maid came 
hurrying with a large tea-tray. The afternoon had passed so 
swiftly. | ; 


98 WOMEN IN LOVE 


After tea, they were all gathered for a walk. | 

“Would you like to come for a walk?” said Hermione to 
each of them, one by one. And they all said yes, feeling 
somehow like prisoners marshaled for exercise. Birkin only 
refused. 

“Will you come for a walk, Rupert?” 

“No, Hermione.” 

“But are you sure?” 

“Quite sure.” There was a second’s hesitation. 

“And why not?” sang Hermione’s question. It made her 
blood run sharp, to be thwarted in even so trifling a matter. 
She intended them all to walk with her in the park. 

“Because I don’t like trooping off in a gang,” he said. 

Her voice rumbled in her throat for a moment. Then she 
said, with a curious stray calm: | 

“Then we'll leave a little boy behind, if he’s sulky.” 

And she looked really gay, while she insulted him. But it 
merely made him stiff. 

She trailed off to the rest of the company, only turning to 
wave her handkerchief to him, and to chuckle with seeps: 
singing out: 

“Good-bye, good-bye, little boy.” 

“Good-bye, impudent hag,” he said to himself. 

They all went through the park. Hermione wanted to show 
them the wild daffodils on a little slope. “This way, this way,” 
sang her leisurely voice at intervals. And they had all to 
come this way.. The daffodils were pretty, but who could 
see them? Ursula was stiff all over with resentment by this 
time, resentment of the whole atmosphere. Gudrun, mocking 
and objective, watched and registered everything. 

They looked at the shy deer, and Hermione talked to the 
stag, as if he too were a boy she wanted to wheedle and fondle. 
He was male, so she must exert some kind of power over him. 
They trailed home by the fish-ponds, and Hermione told them 
about the quarrel of two male swans, who had striven for the 
love of the one lady. She chuckled and laughed as she told 
how the ousted lover had sat with his head buried under his 
wing, on the gravel. 


BREADALBY 99 


When they arrived back at the house, Hermione stood on 
the lawn and sang out, in a strange, small, high voice that 
carried very far: 

“Rupert! Rupert!” The first syllable was high and slow, 
the second dropped down. ‘Roo-o-opert.” 

But there was no answer. A maid appeared. | 

“Where is Mr. Birkin, Alice?” asked the mild straying voice 
of Hermione. But under the straying voice, , what a persistent, 
almost insane will/ 

“T think he’s in his room, madam.” 

“Ts he?” 

Hermione went slowly up the stairs, along the corridor, 
singing out in her high, small call: 

“Ru-oo-pert! Ru-oo-pert!” : 7 

She came to his door, and tapped, still crying: “Roo-pert.” 

“Yes,” sounded his voice at last. 

“What are you doing?” 

The question was mild and curious. 

There was no answer. Then he opened the ek: 

“We’ve come back,” said Hermione. ‘The daffodils are so 
beautiful.” | 

“Yes,” he said, “I’ve seen them.” 

She looked at him with her long, slow, aren look, along 
her cheeks. 

“Have you?” she echoed. And she abe as: looking at 
him. She was stimulated above all things by this conflict 
with him, when he was like a sulky boy, helpless, and she 
had him safe at Breadalby. But underneath she knew the 
split was coming, and her hatred of him was subconscious 
and intense. 

“What were you doing?” she reiterated, in her mild, indiffer- 
ent tone. He did not answer, and she made her way, almost 
unconsciously into his room. He had taken a Chinese drawing 
of geese from the boudoir, and was copying it, with much skill 
and vividness. 

“You are copying the drawing,” she said, standing near 
the table, and looking down at his work. “Yes. How beauti- 
fully you do it! You like it very much, don’t you?” 


100 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“It’s a marvellous drawing,” he said. 

“Is it? I’m so glad you like it, because I’ve always been 
fond of it. The Chinese Ambassador gave it to me.” 

“T know,” he said. 

“But why do you copy it?” she asked, casual and sing-song. | 
“Why not do something original?” 

“T want to know it,” he replied. “One gets more of China, 
copying this picture, than reading all the books,” 

“And what do you get?” 

She was at once roused, she laid as it were violent hands 
on him, to extract his secrets from him. She must know. It 
was a dreadful tyranny, an obsession in her, to know all he 
knew. For some time he was silent, hating to answer her. 
Then, compelled, he began: 

“I know what centres they live from—what they perceive 
and feel—the hot, stinging centrality of a goose in the flux 
of cold water and mud—the curious bitter stinging heat of a 
goose’s blood, entering their own blood like an inoculation of 
corruptive fire—fire of the cold-burning mud—the lotus 
mystery.” 

Hermione looked at him along her narrow, pallid cheeks. 
Her eyes were strange and drugged, heavy under their heavy, 
drooping lids. Her thin bosom shrugged convulsively. He 
stared back at her, devilish and unchanging. With another 
strange, sick convulsion, she turned away, as if she were sick, 
could feel dissolution setting-in in her body. For with her 
mind she was unable to attend to his words, he caught her, as 
it were, beneath all her defences, and destroyed her with some 
insidious occult potency. 

“Yes,” she said, as if she did not know what she were 
saying. “Yes,” and she swallowed, and tried to regain her 
mind. But she could not, she was witless, decentralised. Use 
all her will as she might, she could not recover. She suffered 
the ghastliness of dissolution, broken and gone in a horrible 
corruption. And he stood and looked at her unmoved. She 
strayed out, pallid and preyed-upon like a ghost, like one 


BREADALBY IOr 


attacked by the tomb-influences which dog us. And she was 
gone like a corpse, that has no presence, no connection. He 
remained hard and vindictive. 

Hermione came down to dinner strange and sepulchral, her 
eyes heavy and full of sepulchral darkness, strength. She had 
put on a dress of stiff old greenish brocade, that fitted tight 
and made her look tall and rather terrible, ghastly. In the 
gay light of the drawing-room she was uncanny and oppressive. 
But seated in the half-light of the dining-room, sitting stiffly 
before the shaded candles on the table, she seemed a power, a 
presence. She listened and attended with a drugged attention. 

The party was gay and extravagant in appearance, everybody 
had put on evening dress except Birkin and Joshua Malleson. 
The little Italian Contessa wore a dress of tissue of orange and 
gold and black velvet in soft wide stripes, Gudrun was emerald 
green with strange net-work, Ursula was in yellow with dull 
silver veiling, Miss Bradley was of grey, crimson and jet, 
Fraulein Marz wore pale blue. It gave Hermione a sudden 
convulsive sensation of pleasure, to see these rich colours 
under the candle-light. She was aware of the talk going 
on, ceaselessly, Joshua’s voice dominating; of the ceaseless 
pitter-patter of women’s light laughter and responses; of the 
brilliant colours and the white table and the shadow above and 
below; and she seemed in a swoon of gratification, convulsed 
with pleasure, and yet sick, like a revenant. She took very 
little part in the conversation, yet she heard it all, it was all 
hers. 

They all went together into the drawing-room, as if they 
were one family, easily, without any attention to ceremony. 
Fraulein handed the coffee, everybody smoked cigarettes, or 
else long warden pipes of white clay, of which a sheaf was 
provided. 

“Will you smoke?—cigarettes or pipe?” asked Fraulein 
prettily. There was a circle of people, Sir Joshua with his 
_ eighteenth-century appearance, Gerald the amused, handsome 
_ young Englishman, Alexander tall and the handsome politician, 
_ democratic and lucid, Hermione strange like a long Cassandra, 
_ and the women lurid with colour, all dutifully smoking their 


102 WOMEN IN LOVE 


long white pipes, and sitting in a half-moon in the comfortable, 
soft-lighted drawing-room, round the logs that flickered on the 
marble hearth. 

The talk was very often political or sociological, and inter- 
esting, curiously anarchistic. There was an accumulation of 
powerful force in the room, powerful and destructive. Every- 
thing seemed to be thrown into the melting pot, and it seemed 
to Ursula they were all witches, helping the pot to bubble. 
There was an elation and a satisfaction in it all, but it was 
cruelly exhausting for the new-comers, this ruthless mental 
pressure, this powerful, consuming, destructive mentality that 
emanated from Joshua and Hermione andl Birkin and dominated 
the rest. 

But a sickness, a fearful nausea gathered possession of 
Hermione. ‘There was a lull in the talk, as it was arrested 
by her unconscious but all powerful will. 

“Salsie, won’t you play something?” said Hermione, breaking 
off completely. “Won’t somebody dance? Gudrun, you will 
dance, won’t you? I wish you would. Anche tu, Palestra, 
ballerai?—si, per piacere. You too, Ursula.” | 

Hermione rose and slowly pulled the gold-embroidered band 
that hung by the mantel, clinging to it for a moment, then 
releasing it suddenly. Like a priestess she looked, unconscious, 
sunk in a heavy half-trance. 

A servant came, and soon reappeared with armfuls of silk 
robes and shawls’ and scarves, mostly oriental, things that 
Hermione, with her love for beautiful extravagant dress, had 
collected gradually. 

“The three women will dance together,” she said. 

“What shall it be?” asked Alexander, rising briskly. 

“Vergini Delle Rocche,” said the Contessa at once. 

“They are so languid,” said Ursula. 

“The three witches from Macbeth,” suggested Fraulein use- 
fully. It was finally decided to do Naomi and Ruth and Orpah. 
Ursula was Naomi, Gudrun was Ruth, the Contessa was Orpah. 
The idea was to make a little ballet, in the style of the Russian . 
Ballet of Pavlova and Nijinsky. 

The Contessa was ready first, Alexander went to the piano, 


BREADALBY 103 


a space was cleared. Orpah, in beautiful oriental clothes, 
began slowly to dance the death of her husband. Then Ruth 
came, and they wept together, and lamented, then Naomi 
came to comfort them. It was all done in dumb show, the 
women danced their emotion in gesture and motion. The 
little drama went on for a quarter of an hour. 

Ursula was beautiful as Naomi. All her men were dead, 
it remained to her only to stand alone in indomitable assertion, 
demanding nothing. Ruth, woman-loving, loved her. Orpah, 
a vivid, sensational, subtle widow, would go back to the former 
life, a repetition. The inter-play between the women was 
real and rather frightening. It was strange to see how 
Gudrun clung with heavy, desperate passion to Ursula, yet 
smiled with subtle malevolence against her, how Ursula 
accepted silently, unable to provide any more either for herself 
or for the other, but dangerous and indomitable, refuting her 
grief. 

Hermione loved to watch. She could see the Contessa’s 
rapid, stoat-like sensationalism, Gudrun’s ultimate but treacher- 
ous cleaving to the woman in her sister, Ursula’s dangerous 
helplessness, as if she were helplessly weighted, and unreleased. 

“That was very beautiful,” everybody cried with one accord. 
But Hermione writhed in her soul, knowing what she could not 
know. She cried out for more dancing, and it was her will 
that set the Contessa and Birkin moving mockingly in 
Malbrouk. 

Gerald was excited by the desperate cleaving of Gudrun to 
Naomi. The essence of that female, subterranean recklessness 
and mockery penetrated his blood. He could not forget 
Gudrun’s lifted, offered, cleaving, reckless, yet withal mocking 
weight. And Birkin, watching like a hermit crab from its 
hole, had seen the brilliant frustration and helplessness of 
Ursula. She was rich, full of dangerous power. She was like 
a strange, unconscious bud of powerful womanhood. He was 
unconsciously drawn to her. She was his future. 

Alexander played some Hungarian music, and they all 
danced, seized by the spirit. Gerald was marvellously exhila- 
rated at finding himself in motion, moving towards Gudrun, 


104 WOMEN IN LOVE 


dancing with feet that could not yet escape from the waltz 
and the two-step, but feeling his force stir along his limbs and 
his body, out of captivity. He did not know yet how to dance 
their convulsive, rag-time sort of dancing, but he knew how to 
begin. Birkin, when he could get free from the weight of the 
people present, whom he disliked, danced rapidly and with a 
- real gaiety. And how Hermione hated him for this irresponsible 
gaiety. 

“Now I see,” cried the Contessa excitedly, watching his 
purely gay motion, which he had all to himself. “Mr. Birkin, 
he is a changer.” 

Hermione looked at her slowly, and shuddered, knowing 
that only a foreigner could have seen and have said this. 

“Cosa vuol’dire, Palestra?” she asked, sing-song. 

“Look,” said the Contessa, in Italian. “He is not a man, 
he is a chameleon, a creature of change.” | 

“He is not a man, he is treacherous, not one of us,” said 
itself over in Hermione’s consciousness. And her soul writhed 
in the black subjugation to him, because of his power to 
escape, to exist, other than she did, he was not consistent, 
not a man, less than a man. She hated him in a despair that 
shattered her and broke her down, so that she suffered sheer 
dissolution like a corpse, and was unconscious of everything 
save the horrible sickness of dissolution that was taking place 
within her, body and soul. 

The house being full, Gerald was given the smaller room, 
really the dressing-room, communicating with Birkin’s bed- 
room. When they all took their candles and mounted the 
stairs, where the lamps were burning subduedly, Hermione 
captured Ursula and brought her into her own bedroom, to talk 
to her. A sort of constraint came over Ursula in the big, 
strange bedroom. Hermione seemed to be bearing down on 
her, awful and inchoate, making some appeal. They were 
looking at some Indian silk shirts, gorgeous and sensual in 
themselves, their shape, their almost corrupt gorgeousness. 
And Hermione came near, and her bosom writhed, and Ursula 
was for a moment blank with panic. And for a moment 
Hermione’s haggard eyes saw the fear on the face of the other, 


a te el 


ae ey 


BREADALBY 10s 


there was again a sort of crash, a crashing down. And Ursula 
picked up a shirt of rich red and blue silk, made for a young 
princess of fourteen, and was crying mechanically: 

“Tsn’t it wonderful-swho would dare to put those two 
strong colours together—” 

Then Hermione’s maid entered silently and Ursula, overcome 
with dread, escaped, carried away by powerful impulse. 

Birkin went straight to bed. He was feeling happy, and 
sleepy. Since he had danced he was happy. But Gerald 
would talk to him. Gerald, in evening dress, sat on Birkin’s 
bed when the other lay down, and must talk. 

“Who are those two Brangwens?” Gerald asked. 

“They live in Beldover.” 

“In Beldover! Who are they then?” 

“Teachers in the Grammar School.” 

There was a pause. 

-“They are!” exclaimed Gerald at length. “I thought I had 
seen them before.” 

“It disappoints you?” said Birkin. 

“Disappoints me! No—but how is it Hermione has them 
here?” 

“She knew Gudrun in London—that’s the younger one, the 
one with the darker hair—she’s an artist—does sculpture and 
modelling.” 

“‘She’s not a teacher in the Grammar School, then—only the 
other?” 

“Both—Gudrun art mistress, Ursula a class mistress.” 

“And what’s the father?” 

“Handicraft instructor in the schools.” 

“Really! ”» 

“Class-barriers are breaking down!” 

Gerald. was always uneasy under the slightly jeering tone of 
the other. 

“That their father is handicraft instructor in a school! 
What does it matter to me?” 

Birkin laughed. Gerald looked at his face, as it lay there 
laughing and bitter and indifferent on the pillow, and he could 
not go away. ; 


106 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“I don’t suppose you will see very much more of Gudrun, 
at least. She is a restless bird, she’ll be gone in a week or 
two,” said Birkin. 

“Where will she go?” 

“London, Paris, Rome—heaven knows. I always expect 
her to sheer off to Damascus or San Francisco; she’s a bird of 
paradise. God knows what she’s got to do with Beldover. It 
goes by contraries, like dreams.” 

Gerald pondered for a few moments. 

“Flow do you know her so well?” he asked. 

“T knew her in London,” he replied, ‘“‘in the Algernon Strange 
set. She’ll know about Pussum and Libidnikov and the rest 
—even if she doesn’t know them personally. She was never 
quite that set—more conventional, in a way. I’ve known her 
for two years, I suppose.” 

“And she makes money, apart from her teaching?” asked 
Gerald. : 

“Some—irregularly. She can sll her models. She has a 
certain réclame.” 

“How much for?” 

“A guinea, ten guineas.” 

“And are they good? What are they?” 

“I think sometimes they are marvellously good. That is. 
hers, those two wagtails in Hermione’s boudoir—you’ve seen 
them—they are carved in wood and painted.” 

“T thought it was savage carving again.” 

“No, hers. That’s what they are—animals and birds, some- 
times odd small people in everyday dress, really rather won- 
derful when they come off. They have a sort of. funniness 
that is quite unconscious and subtle.” 

“She might be a well-known artist one day?” mused Gerald. 

“She might. But I think she won’t. She drops her art if 
anything else catches her. Her contrariness prevents her tak- 
ing it seriously—she must never be too serious, she feels she 
might give herself away. And she won’t give herself away— 
she’s always on the defensive. That’s what I can’t stand about 
her type. By the way, how did things go off with biome 
after I left you? I haven’t heard anything.” | 


“ 


BREADALBY 107 


“Oh, rather disgusting. Halliday turned objectionable, and 
I only just saved myself from jumping in his stomach, in a 
real old-fashioned row.” 

Birkin was silent. 

“Of course,” he said, “Julius is somewhat insane. On the 
one hand he’s had religious mania, and on the other, he is 
fascinated by obscenity. Either he’s a pure servant, washing 
the feet of Christ, or else he is making obscene drawings of 
Jesus—action and reaction—and between the two, nothing. 
He is really insane. He wants a pure lily, another girl, with 
a Botticelli face, on the one hand, and on the other, he must 
have the Pussum, just to defile himself with her.” 

“That’s what I can’t make out,” said Gerald. ‘‘Does he 
love her, the Pussum, or doesn’t he?” 

“He neither does nor doesn’t. She is the harlot, the actual 
harlot of adultery to him. And he’s got a craving to throw 
himself into the filth of her. Then he gets up and calls on 
the name of the lily of purity, the baby-faced girl, and so 
enjoys himself all round. It’s the old story—action and 
reaction, and nothing between.” 
 “T don’t know,” said Gerald, after a pause, “that he does 
insult the Pussum so very much. She strikes me as being 
rather foul.” 

“But I thought you liked her,” exclaimed Birkin. “I always 
felt fond of her. I never had anything to do with her, per- 
sonally, that’s true.” 

“T liked her all right, for a couple of days,” said Gerald. 
“But a week of her would have turned me over. There’s a 
certain smell about the skin of those women, that in the end 
is sickening beyond words—even if you like it at first.” 

“T know,” said Birkin. Then he added, rather fretfully, 
“But go to bed, Gerald. God knows what time it is.” 

Gerald looked at his watch, and at length rose off the bed, 
and went to his room. But he returned in a few minutes, in 
his shirt. 

“One thing,” he said, seating himself on the bed again. 
“We finished up rather stormily, and I never had time to give 
her anything.” 


108 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Money?” said Birkin. ‘She'll get what she wants from 
Halliday or from one of her acquaintances. % 

“But then,” said Gerald, “I’d rather give her her dues and 
settle the account.” 

“She doesn’t care.” 

“No, perhaps not. But one feels the account is left open, 
and one would rather it were closed.” 

“Would you?” said Birkin. He was looking at the white 
legs of Gerald, as the latter sat on the side of the bed in his 
shirt. They were white-skinned, full, muscular legs, hand- 
some and decided. Yet they moved Birkin with a sort of 
pathos, tenderness, as if they were childish. 

“I think I’d rather close the account,” said Gerald, repeating 
himself vaguely. 

“Tt doesn’t matter one way or another,” said Birkin. 

“You always say it doesn’t matter,” said Gerald, a little 
puzzled, looking down at the face of the other man ‘affec- 
tionately. : 

“Neither does it,” said Birkin. 

“But she was a decent sort, really—” 

“Render unto Cesarina the things that are Cesarina’s,” said 
Birkin, turning aside. It seemed to him Gerald was talking 
for the sake of talking. “Go away, it wearies me—it’s too 
late at night,” he said. 

“T wish you’d tell me something that did matter,” said 
Gerald, looking down all the time at the face of the other 
man, waiting for something. But Birkin turned his face aside. 

“All right then, go to sleep,” said Gerald, and he laid his 
hand affectionately on the other man’s shoulder, and went 
away. 

i the morning when Gerald awoke and heard Birkin move, 
he called out: “TI still think I ought to give the Pussum ten 
pounds.” 

“Oh God!” said Birkin, “don’t be so matter-of-fact. Close 
the account in your own soul, if you like. It is there you 
can’t close it.” 

“How do you know I can’t?” 

“Knowing you,” came the laconic answer. 


BREADALBY 109 


Gerald meditated for some moments. 

“Tt seems to me the right thing to do, you know, with the 
Pussums, is to pay them.” 

“And the right thing for mistresses: keep them. And the 
right thing for wives: live under the same roof with them. 
Integer vitz scelerisque purus—” said Birkin. 

“There’s no need to be nasty about it,” said Gerald. 

“Tt bores me. I’m not interested in your peccadilloes,” 

“And I don’t care whether you are or not—I am.” 

The morning was again sunny. The maid had been in and 
brought the water, and had drawn the curtains. Birkin, sit- 
ting up in bed, looked lazily and pleasantly out on the park, 
that was so green and deserted, romantic, belonging to the past. 
He was thinking how lovely, how sure, how formed, how final 
all the things of the past were—the lovely accomplished past— 
this house, so still and golden, the park slumbering its cen- 
turies of peace. And then, what a snare and a delusion, this 
beauty of static things—what a horrible, dead prison Bread- 
alby really was, what an intolerable confinement, the peace! 
Yet it was better than the sordid scrambling of the present. If 
only one might create the future after one’s own heart—for 
a little pure truth, a little unflinching application of simple 
truth to life, the heart cried out ceaselessly. 

“T can’t see what you will leave me at all, to be interested 
in,” came Gerald’s voice from the lower room. “Neither the 
Pussums, nor the mines, nor anything else.” 

“You be interested in what you can, Gerald. Only I’m not 
interested myself,” said Birkin. 

“What am I to do at all, then?” came Gerald’s voice. 

“What you like. What am I to do myself?” 

In the silence Birkin could feel Gerald musing this fact. 

“T’m blest if I know,” came the good-humoured answer. 

“You see,” said Birkin, “part of you wants the Pussum, 
and nothing but the Pussum, part of you wants the mines, the 
business, and nothing but the business—and there you are— 
all in bits—” 

“And part of me wants something else,” said Gerald, in a 
queer, quiet, real voice. 


110 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What?” said Birkin, rather surprised. 

“‘That’s what I hoped you could tell me,” said Gerald. 

There was a silence for some time. 

“T can’t tell you—I can’t find my own way, let alone yours. 
You might marry,” Birkin replied. 

“Who—the Pussum?” asked Gerald. 

“Perhaps,” said Birkin. And he rose and went to the 
window. 

“That is your panacea,” said Gerald. “But you haven’t 
even tried it on yourself yet, and you are sick enough.” 

“T am,” said Birkin. “Still, I shall come right.” 

“Through marriage?” | 

“Yes,” Birkin answered obstinately. 

“And no,” added Gerald. “No, no, no, my boy.” 

There was a silence between them, and a strange tension 
of hostility. They always kept a gap, a distance between 
.them, they wanted always to be free each of the other. Yet 
there was a curious heart-straining towards each other. 

“Salvator femininus,” said Gerald, satirically.. 

“Why not?” said Birkin. 

“No reason at all,” said Gerald, “if it veali works. But 
whom will you marry?” : 

“A woman,” said Birkin. 
~ “Good,” said Gerald. 

Birkin and Gerald were the last to come down to breakfast. 
Hermione liked everybody to be early. She suffered when she 
felt her day was diminished, she felt she had missed her life. 
She seemed to grip the hours by the throat, to force her life 
from them. She was rather pale and ghastly, as if left behind, 
in the morning. Yet she had her power, her will was strangely 
pervasive. With the entrance of the two young men a sudden 
tension was felt. 

She lifted her face, and said, in her amused sing-song: 

“Good morning! Did you sleep well? I’m so glad.” 

And she turned away, ignoring them. Birkin, who knew 
her well, saw that she intended to discount his existence. 

“Will you take what you want from the sideboard?” said 
Alexander, in a voice slightly suggesting disapprobation. 


- 


BREADALBY TIX 


“T hope the things aren’t cold. Oh no! Do you mind putting 
out the flame under the chafing-dish, Rupert? ‘Thank you.” 

Even Alexander was rather authoritative where Hermione 
was cool. He took his tone from her inevitably. Birkin sat 
down and looked at the table. He was so used to this house, to 
this room, to this atmosphere, through years of intimacy, and 
now he felt in complete opposition to it all, it had nothing to 
do with him. How well he knew Hermione, as she sat there, 
erect and silent and somewhat bemused, and yet so potent, so 
powerful! He knew her statically, so finally, that it was 
almost like a madness. It was difficult to believe one was not 
mad, that one was not a figure in the hall of kings in some 
Egyptian tomb, where the dead all sat immemorial and tre- 
mendous. How utterly he knew Joshua Malleson, who was 
talking in his harsh, yet rather mincing voice, endlessly, end- 
lessly, always with a strong mentality working, always inter- 
esting, and yet always known, everything he said known be- 
forehand, however novel it was, and clever. Alexander the 
up-to-date host, so bloodlessly free-and-easy, Fraulein so 
prettily chiming in just as she should, the little Italian 
Countess taking notice of everybody, only playing her little 
game, objective and cold, like a weasel watching everything, 
and extracting her own amusement, never giving herself in the 
slightest; then Miss Bradley, heavy and rather subservient, 
treated with cool, almost amused contempt by Hermione, and 
therefore slighted by everybody—how known it all was, like 
a game with the figures set out, the same figures, the Queen 
of chess, the knights, the pawns, the same now as they were 
hundreds of years ago, the same figures moving round in one 
of the innumerable permutations that make up the game. But 
the game is known, its going on is like a madness, it is so 
exhausted. 

There was Gerald, an amused look on his face; the game 
pleased him. There was Gudrun, watching with steady, large, 
hostile eyes; the game fascinated her, and she loathed it. 
There was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her face, as 
if she were hurt, and the pain were just outside her con- 
sciousness. 


112 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Suddenly Birkin got up and went out. 

“That’s enough,” he said to himself involuntarily. 

Hermione knew his motion, though not in her consciousness. 
She lifted her heavy eyes and saw him lapse suddenly away, on 
a sudden, unknown tide, and the waves broke over her. Only 
her indomitable will remained static and mechanical, she sat 
at the table making her musing, stray remarks. But the dark- 
ness had covered her, she was like a ship that has gone down. 
It was finished for her too, she was wrecked in the darkness. 
Yet the unfailing mechanism of her will worked on, she had 
that activity. 

“Shall we bathe this morning?” she said, suddenly looking 
at them all. 

“Splendid,” said Joshua. “It is a perfect morning.” 

“Oh, it is beautiful,” said Fraulein. 

“Yes, let us bathe,” said the Italian woman. 

“We have no bathing suits,” said Gerald. 

“Have mine,” said Alexander. “I must go to church and 
read the lessons. They expect me.” 

“Are you a Christian?” asked the Italian Countess, with 
sudden interest. 

“No,” said Alexander. “I’m not. But I believe in keeping 
up the old institutions.” 

“They are so beautiful,” said Fraulein daintily. 

“Oh, they are,” cried Miss Bradley. 

They all trailed out on to the lawn. It was a sunny, soft 
morning in early summer, when life ran in the world subtly, 
like a reminiscence. The church bells were ringing a little 
way off, not a cloud was in the sky, the swans were like lilies 
on the water below, the peacocks walked with long, prancing 
steps across the shadow and into the sunshine of the grass. 
One wanted to swoon into the by-gone perfection of it all. 

“Good-bye,” called Alexander, waving his gloves cheerily, 
and he disappeared behind the bushes, on his way to church. 

“Now,” said Hermione, “shall we all bathe?” 

“T won't,” said Ursula. 

“You don’t want to?” said Hermione, looking at her slowly. 

“No. I don’t want to,” said Ursula. 


BREADALBY 113 


“Nor I,” said Gudrun. 

“What about my suit?” asked Gerald. 

“J don’t know,” laughed Hermione, with an odd, amused 
intonation. ‘Will a handkerchief do—a large handkerchief?” 

“That will do,” said Gerald. 

“Come along then,” sang Hermione. 

The first to run across the lawn was the little Italian, small 
and like a cat, her white legs twinkling as she went, ducking 
slightly her head, that was tied in a gold silk kerchief. She 
tripped through the gate and down the grass, and stood, like a 
tiny figure of ivory and bronze, at the water’s edge, having 
dropped off her towelling, watching the swans, which came up 
in surprise. Then out ran Miss Bradley, like a large, soft 
plum in her dark-blue suit. Then Gerald came, a scarlet silk 
kerchief round his loins, his towels over his arms. He seemed 
to flaunt himself a little in the sun, lingering and laughing, 
strolling easily, looking white but natural in his nakedness. 
Then came Sir Joshua, in an overcoat, and lastly Hermione, 
striding with stiff grace from out of a great mantle of purple 
silk, her head tied up in purple and gold. Handsome was 
her stiff, long body, her straight-stepping white legs, there was 
a static magnificence about her as she let the cloak float loosely 
away from her striding. She crossed the lawn like some 
strange memory, and passed slowly and statelily towards 
the water. 

There were three ponds, in terraces descending the valley, 
large and smooth and beautiful, lying in the sun. The water 
ran over a little stone wall, over small rocks, splashing down 
from one pond to the level below. The swans had gone out 
on to the opposite bank, the reeds smelled sweet, a faint breeze 
touched the skin. 

_ Gerald had dived in, after Sir Joshua, and had swum to the 
end of the pond. There he climbed out and sat on the wall. 
There was a dive, and the little Countess was swimming like 
a rat, to join him. They both sat in the sun, laughing and 
crossing their arms on their breasts. Sir Joshua swam up to 
them, and stood near them, up to his arm-pits in the water. 


II4 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Then Hermione and Miss Bradley swam over, and they sat 
in a row on the embankment. 

“Aren’t they terrifying? Aren’t they really terrifying?” 
said Gudrun. “Don’t they look saurian? They are just like 
great lizards. Did you ever see anything like Sir Joshua? 
But really, Ursula, he belongs to the primeval world, when 
great lizards crawled about.” 

Gudrun looked in dismay on Sir Joshua, who-stood up to 
the breast in the water, his long, greyish hair washed down 
into his eyes, his neck set into thick, crude shoulders. He 
was talking to Miss Bradley, who, seated on the bank above, 
plump and big and wet, looked as if she might roll and slither 
in the water almost like one of the slithering sea-lions in 
the Zoo. 

Ursula watched in silence. Gerald was laughing happily, 
between Hermione and the Italian. He reminded her of 
Dionysos, because his hair was really yellow, his figure so full 
and laughing. Hermione, in her large, stiff, sinister grace, 
leaned near him, frightening, as if she were not responsible 
for what she might do. He knew a certain danger in her, a 
convulsive madness. But he only laughed the more, turning 
often to the little Countess, who was ise up her face at 
him. 

They all dropped into the water, and were swimming to- 
gether like a shoal of seals. Hermione was powerful and 
unconscious in the water, large and slow and powerful. Palestra 
was quick and silent as a water rat, Gerald wavered and 
flickered, a white natural shadow. Then, one after the other, 
they waded out, and went up to the house. 

But Gerald lingered a moment to speak to Gudrun. 

“You don’t like the water?” he said. 

She looked at him with a long, slow inscrutable look, as he 
stood before her negligently, the water standing in beads all 
over his skin. 

“T like it very much,” she replied. 

He paused, expecting some sort of explanation. 

“And you swim?” 

“Yes, I swim.” | 


BREADALBY IIs 


Still he would not ask her why she would not go in then. 
He could feel something ironic in her. He walked away, 
piqued for the first time. 

“Why wouldn’t you bathe?” he asked her. again, later, when 
he was once more the properly-dressed young Englishman. 

She hesitated a moment before answering, opposing his per- 
sistence. 

“Because I didn’t like the crowd,” she replied. 

He laughed, her phrase seemed to re-echo in his conscious- 
ness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him. Whether 
he would or not, she signified the real world to him. He 
wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her expectations. 
He knew that her criterion was the only one that mattered. 
The others were all outsiders, instinctively, whatever they 
might be socially. And Gerald could not help it, he was 
bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her idea of 
a man and a human-being. 

After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Hermione 
and Gerald and Birkin lingered, finishing their talk. There 
had been some discussion, on the whole quite intellectual and 
artificial, about a new state, a new world of man. Supposing 
this old social state were broken and destroyed, then, out of 
the chaos, what then? 

The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the social equality 
of man. No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every man was 
fit for his own little bit of a task—let him do that, and then 
please himself. The unifying principle was the work in hand. 
Only work, the business of production, held men together. It 
was mechanical, but then society was a mechanism. Apart 
from work they were isolated, free to do as they liked. — 

“Oh!” cried Gudrun. ‘Then we shan’t have names any 
more—we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr Ober- 

‘meister and Herr Untermeister. I can imagine it—‘I am Mrs. 
Colliery-Manager Crich—I am Mrs. Member-of-Parliament 
Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen.’ Very pretty 
that.” 

“Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher 
Brangwen,” said Gerald. 


116 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What things, Mr. Colliery-Manager Crich? ‘The relation 
between you and me, par exemple?” 

“Yes, for example,” cried the Italian. “That which is be- 
tween men and women—!” 

“That is non-social,” said Birkin, sarcastically. 

“Exactly,” said Gerald. “Between me and a woman, the 
social question does not enter. It is my own affair.” 

“A ten-pound note on it,” said Birkin. ; 

“You don’t admit that a woman is a social being?” asked 
Ursula of Gerald. 

“She is both,” said Gerald. “She is a social being, as far 
as society is concerned. But for her own private self, she is 
a free agent, it is her own affair, what she does.” 

“But won’t it be rather difficult to arrange the two halves?” 
asked Ursula. A 

“Oh no,” replied Gerald. ‘They arrange themselves nat- 
urally—we see it now, everywhere.” 

“Don’t you laugh so pleasantly till you’re out of the wood,” 
said Birkin. 

Gerald knitted his brows in momentary irritation. 

“Was I laughing?” he said. 

“If,’ said Hermione at last, ‘“‘we could only realise, that in 
the spirit we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers 
there—the rest wouldn’t matter, there would be no more of 
this carping and envy and this struggle for power, which de- 
stroys, only destroys. 

This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately 
the party rose from the table. But when the others had gone, 
Birkin turned round in bitter declamation, saying: 

“Tt is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We 
are all different and unequal in spirit—it is only the social 
differences that are based on accidental material conditions. 
We are all abstractly or mathematically equal, if you like. 
Every man has hunger and thirst, two eyes, one nose and two 
legs. We’re all the same in point of number. But spiritually, 
there is pure difference and neither equality nor inequality 
counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must 
found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie—your 


BREADALBY 117 


brotherhood of man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further 
than the mathematical abstraction. We all drank milk first, 
we all eat bread and meat, we all want to ride in motor-cars 
—therein lies the beginning and the end of the brotherhood of 
man. But no equality. 

“But I, myself, who am myself, what have I to do with 
equality with any other man or woman? In the spirit, I am 
as separate as one star is from another, as different in quality 
and quantity. Establish a state on that. One man isn’t any 
better than another, not because they are equal, but because 
they are intrinsically other, that there is no term of com- 
parison. The minute you begin to compare, one man is seen 
to be far better than another, all the inequality you can imagine, 
is there by nature. I want every man to have his share in the 
world’s goods, so that I am rid of his importunity, so that I 
can tell him: ‘Now you’ve got what you want—you’ve got 
your fair share of the world’s gear. Now, you one-mouthed 
fool, mind yourself and don’t obstruct me.’ ” 

Hermione was looking at him with leering eyes, along her 
cheeks. He could feel violent waves of hatred and loathing of 
all he said, coming out of her. It was dynamic hatred and 
loathing, coming strong and black out of the unconsciousness. 
She heard his words in her unconscious self, consciously she 
was as if deafened, she paid no heed to them. 

“Tt sounds like megalomania, Rupert,” said Gerald, genially. 

Hermione gave a queer, grunting sound. Birkin stood back. 

“Yes, let it,” he said suddenly, the whole tone gone out of 
his voice,.that had been so insistent, bearing everybody down. 
And he went away. 

But he felt, later, a little compunction. He had been vio- 
lent, cruel with poor Hermione. He wanted to recompense 
her, to make it up. He had hurt her, he had been vindictive. 
He wanted to be on good terms with her again. 

He went into her boudoir, a remote and very cushiony place. 
She was sitting at her table writing letters. She lifted her face 
abstractedly when he entered, watched him go to the sofa, 
and sit down. Then she looked down at her paper again. 

He took up a large volume which he had been reading. be- 


118 WOMEN IN LOVE 


fore, and became minutely attentive to his author. His back 
was towards Hermione. She could not go on with her writing, 
Her whole mind was a chaos, darkness breaking in upon it, 
and herself struggling to gain control with her will, as a swim- 
mer struggles with the swirling water. But in spite of her 
efforts she was borne down, darkness seemed to break over 
her, she felt as if her heart was bursting. The terrible tension 
grew stronger and stronger, it was most fearful. agony, like 
being walled up. 

And then she realised that his presence was the wall, his 
presence was destroying her. Unless she could break out, she 
must die most fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the 
wall. She must break down the wall—she must break him 
down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed 
her life to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most 
horribly. 

Terribly, shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, 
as if many volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She 
was aware of him sitting silently there, an unthinkable evil 
obstruction. Only this blotted out her mind, pressed out her 
very breathing, his silent, stooping back, the back of his head. 

A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms—she was 
going to know her voluptuous consummation. Her arms 
quivered and were strong, immeasurably and_ irresistibly 
strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium 
of pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of 
voluptuous ecstasy at, last. It was coming! In utmost terror 
and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in extremity of 
bliss. Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis 
lazuli that stood on her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it 
round in her hand as she rose silently. Her heart was a pure 
flame in her breast, she was purely unconscious in ecstasy. 
She moved towards him and stood behind him for a moment in 
ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless and 
unconscious. 

Then, swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like 
fluid lightning and gave her a perfect, unutterable consum- 
mation, unutterable satisfaction, she brought down the ball 


BREADALBY 119 


of jewel stone with all her force, crash on his head. But her 
fingers were in the way and deadened the blow. Nevertheless, 
down went his head on the table on which his book lay, the 
stone slid aside and over his ear, it was one convulsion of pure 
bliss for her, lit up by the crushed pain of her fingers. But 
it was not somehow complete. She lifted her arm high to aim 
once more, straight down on the head that lay dazed on the 
table. She must smash it, it must be smashed before her 
ecstasy was consummated, fulfilled for ever. A thousand lives, 
a thousand deaths mattered nothing now, only the fulfilment of 
this perfect ecstasy. 

She was not swift, she could only move slowly. A strong 
spirit in him woke him and made him lift his face and twist to 
look at her. Her arm was raised, the hand clasping the ball 
of lapis lazuli. It was her left hand, he realized again with 
horror that she was left-handed. Hurriedly, with a burrowing 
motion, ,he covered his head under the thick volume of Thucy- 
dides, and the blow came down, almost breaking his neck, and 
shattering his heart. 

He was shattered, but he was not afraid. Twisting round to 
face her he pushed the’ table over and got away from her. 
He was like a flask that is smashed to atoms, he seemed to 
himself that he was all fragments, smashed to bits. Yet his 
movements were perfectly coherent and clear, his soul was 
entire and unsurprised. 

“No ae don’t, Hermione, » he said in a low voice. “J don’t 
let you.” 

He saw her standing tall and livid and attentive, the stone 
clenched tense in her hand. 

“Stand away and let me go,” he said, drawing near to her. 
_ As if pressed back by some hand, she stood away, watching 
him all the time without changing, like a neutralised angel 
confronting him. 

“Tt is no good,” he said, when he. had gone past her. “It 
isn’t I who will die. You hear?” 

He kept his face to her as he went out, lest she should 


120 WOMEN IN LOVE 


strike again. While he was on his guard, she dared not move. 
And he was on his guard, she was powerless. So he had gone, 
and left her standing. 

She remained perfectly rigid, standing as - she was for a 
long time. Then she staggered to the couch and lay down, 
and went heavily to sleep. When she awoke, she remem- 
bered what she had done, but it seemed to her, she had only 
hit him, as any woman might do, because he tortured her. 
She was perfectly right. She knew that, spiritually, she was 
right. In her own infallible purity, she had done what must 
be done. She was right, she was pure. A drugged, almost 
sinister religious expression became permanent on her face. 

Birkin, barely conscious, and yet perfectly direct in his 
motion, went out of the house and straight across the park, 
to the open country, to the hills. The brilliant day had become 
overcast, spots of rain were falling. He wandered on to a 
wild valley-side, where were thickets of hazel, many flowers, 
tufts of heather, and little clumps of young fir-trees, budding 
with soft paws. It was rather wet everywhere, there was a 
stream running down at the bottom of the valley, which was 
gloomy, or seemed gloomy. He was aware that he could not 
regain his consciousness, that he was moving in a sort of 
darkness. 

Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hill- 
side, that was overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. 
He wanted to touch them all, to saturate himself with the 
touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat down 
naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among 
the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the 
arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his 
breasts. It was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, 
he seemed to saturate himself with their contact. 

But they were too soft. He went through the long grass 
to a clump of young fir-trees, that were no higher than a 
man. The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in 
keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops 
on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft- 
sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him vividly, 


- 


BREADALBY I2I 


but not too much, because all his movements were too dis- 
criminate and soft. To lie down, and roll in the sticky, cool 
young hyacinths, to lie on one’s belly and cover one’s back 
with handfuls of fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more 
delicate and more beautiful than the touch of any woman; 
and then to sting one’s thigh against the living dark bristles 
of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light whip of the hazel 
on one’s shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the silvery birch- 
trunk against one’s breast, its smoothness, its hardness, its 
vital knots and ridges—this was good, this was all very good, 
very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would . 
satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travel- 
ling into one’s blood. How fortunate he was, that there was 
this lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as 
he waited for it; how fulfilled he was, how happy! 

As he dried himself a little with his handkerchief, he 
thought about Hermione and the blow. He could feel a pain 
on the side of his head. But after all, what did it matter? 
What did Hermione matter, what did people matter altogether? 
There was this perfect cool loneliness, so lovely and fresh and 
unexplored. Really, what a mistake he had made, thinking 
he wanted people, thinking he wanted a woman. He did not 
want a woman—not in the least. The leaves and the prim- 
roses and the trees, they were really lovely and cool and de- 
sirable, they really came into the blood and were added on to 
him. He was enrichened now immeasurably, and so glad. 

It was quite right of Hermione to want to kill him. What 
had he to do with her? Why should he pretend to have any- 
thing to do with human beings at all? Here was his world, 
he wanted nobody and nothing but the lovely, subtle, respon- 
sive vegetation, and himself, his own living self. 

It was necessary to go back into the world. That was true. 
But that did not matter, so one knew where one belonged. 
He knew now where he belonged. He knew where to plant 
himself; along with the trees, in the folds of the delicious 
fresh-growing leaves. This was his place, his marriage place. 
The world was extraneous. 


122 WOMEN IN LOVE 


He climbed out of the valley, wondering if he were mad. 
But if so, he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. 
He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not 
want that old sanity of the world, which was become so re- 
pulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. 
It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying. 

As for the certain grief he felt at the same time, in his soul, 
that was only the remains of an old ethic, that bade a human 
being adhere to humanity. But he was weary of the old ethic, 
of the human being, and of humanity. He loved now the soft, 
delicate vegetation, that was so cool and perfect. He would 
overlook the old grief, he would put away the old ethic, he 
would be free in his new state. 

He was aware of the pain in his head becoming more and 
more difficult every minute. He was walking now along the 
road to the nearest station. It was raining and he had no 
hat. But then plenty of cranks went out nowadays without 
hats, in the rain. 

He wondered again how much of his heaviness of heart, a 
certain depression, was due to fear, fear lest anybody should 
have seen him naked lying with the vegetation. What a dread 
he had of mankind, of other people! It amounted almost to 
horror, to a sort of dream terror—his horror of being observed 
by some other people. If he were on an island, like Alexander 
Selkirk, with only the creatures and the trees, he would be 
free and glad, there would be none of this heaviness, this mis- 
giving. He could love the vegetation and be quite happy and 
unquestioned, by himself. 

He had better send a note to Hermione: she might trouble 
about him, and he did not want the onus of ce, So at the 
station, he wrote saying: 

“T will go on to town—lI don’t want to come e back to 
Breadalby for the present. But it is quite all right—I 
don’t want you to mind having biffed me, in the least. 
Tell the others it is just one of my moods. You were 
quite right, to biff me—because I know we wanted to. 
So there’s the end of it.” 


BREADALBY 123 


In the train, however, he felt ill. Every motion was in- 
sufferable pain, and he was sick. He dragged himself from 
the station into a cab, feeling his way step by step, like a blind 
man, and held up only by a dim will. 

For a week or two he was ill, but he did not let Hermione 
know, and she thought he was sulking; there was a complete 
estrangement between them. She became rapt, abstracted in 
her conviction of exclusive righteousness. She lived in and 
by her own self-esteem, conviction of her own rightness of 
spirit. 


CHAPTER IX 
COAL-DUST 


Gornc home from school in the afternoon, the Brangwen 
girls descended the hill between the picturesque cottages of 
Willey Green till they came to the railway crossing. There 
they found the gate shut, because the colliery train was rum- 
bling nearer. They could hear the small locomotive panting 
hoarsely as it advanced with caution between the embank- 
ments. The one-legged man in the little signal-hut by the 
road stared out from his security, like a crab from a snail-shell. 

Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a 
red Arab mare. He rode well and softly, pleased with the 
delicate quivering of the creature between his knees. And 
he was very picturesque, at least in Gudrun’s eyes, sitting 
soft and close on the slender red mare, whose long tail flowed 
on the air. He saluted the two girls, and drew up at the cross- 
ing to wait for the gate, looking down the railway for the 
approaching train. In spite of her ironic smile at his pic- 
turesqueness, Gudrun liked to look at him. He was well- 
set and easy, his face with its warm tan showed up his whitish, 
coarse moustache, and his blue eyes were full of sharp light 
as he watched the distance. 

The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, hidden. 
The mare did not like it. She began to wince away, as if hurt 
by the unknown noise. But Gerald pulled her back and held 
her head to the gate. The sharp blasts of the chuffing engine 
broke with more and more force on her. The repeated sharp 
blows of unknown, terrifying noise struck through her till she 
was rocking with terror. She recoiled like a spring let go. 
But a glistening, half-smiling look came into Gerald’s face. He 
brought her back again, inevitably. 

The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clank- 

124 


- 


COAL-DUST 125 


ing steel connecting-rod emerged on the highroad, clanking 
sharply. The mare rebounded like a drop of water from hot 
iron. Ursula and Gudrun pressed back into the hedge, in fear. 
But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and forced her back. It 
seemed as if he sank into her magnetically, and could thrust 
her back against herself. | 

“The fool!” cried Ursula loudly. “Why doesn’t he ride 
away till it’s gone by?” 

Gudrun was looking at him with black-dilated, spellbound 
eyes. But he sat glistening and obstinate, forcing the wheel- 
ing mare, which spun and swerved like a wind, and yet could 
not get out of the grasp of his will, nor escape from the mad 
clamour of terror that resounded through her, as the trucks 
thumped slowly, heavily, horrifying, one after the other, one 
pursuing the other, over the rails of the crossing. 

The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be done, 
put on the brakes, and back came the trucks rebounding on 
the iron buffers, striking like horrible cymbals, clashing nearer 
and nearer in frightful strident concussions. The mare opened 
her mouth and rose slowly, as if lifted up on a wind of terror, 
Then suddenly her fore feet struck out, as she convulsed her- 
self utterly away from the horror. Back she went, and the 
two girls clung to each other, feeling she must fall backwards 
on top of him. But he leaned forward, his face shining with 
fixed amusement, and at last he brought her down, sank her 
down, and was bearing her back to the mark. But as strong 
as the pressure of his compulsion was the repulsion of her 
utter terror, throwing her back away from the railway, so 
that she spun round and round on two legs, as if she were in 
the centre of some whirlwind. It made Gudrun faint with 
poignant dizziness, which seemed to penetrate to her heart. 

“No—! No—! Let her go! Let her go, you fool, you 
fool——!” cried Ursula at the top of her voice, completely 
outside herself. And Gudrun hated her bitterly for being out- 
side herself. It was unendurable that Ursula’s voice was so 
powerful and naked. 

A sharpened look came on Gerald’s face. He bit himself 
down on the mare like a keen edge biting home, and forced 


126 WOMEN IN LOVE 


her round. She roared as she breathed, her nostrils were two 
wide, hot holes, her mouth was apart, her eyes frenzied. It 
was a repulsive sight. But he held on her unrelaxed, with an 
almost mechanical relentlessness, keen as a sword pressing in 
to her. Both man and horse were sweating with violence. Yet 
he seemed calm as a ray of cold sunshine. 

Meanwhile the eternal trucks were rumbling on, very slowly, 
treading one after the other, one after the other, like a dis- 
gusting dream that has no end. The connecting chains were 
grinding and squeaking as the tension varied, the mare pawed 
and struck away mechanically now, her terror fulfilled in her, 
for now the man encompassed her; her paws were blind and 
pathetic as she beat the air, the man closed round her, and 
brought her down, almost as if she were part of his, own 
physique. 

“‘And she’s bleeding! She’s bleeding!” cried Ursula, frantic 
with opposition and hatred of Gerald. She alone understood 
him perfectly in pure opposition. 

Gudrun looked and saw the trickles of blood on the sides of 
the mare, and she turned white. And then on the very wound 
the bright spurs came down, pressing relentlessly. The world 
reeled and passed into nothingness for Gudrun, she could not 
know any more. 

When she recovered, her soul was calm and cold, without 
feeling. The trucks were still rumbling by, and the man and 
the mare were still fighting. But she herself was cold and 
separate, she had no more feeling for them. She was quite 
hard and cold and indifferent. 

They could see the top of the hooded guard’s-van approach- 
ing, the sound of the trucks was diminishing, there was hope 
of relief from the intolerable noise. The heavy panting of the 
half-stunned mare sounded automatically, the man seemed to 
be relaxing confidently, his will bright and unstained. The 
guard’s-van came up, and passed slowly, the guard staring 
out in his transition on the spectacle in the road. And, through 
the man in the closed wagon Gudrun could see the whole scene 
spectacularly, isolated and momentary, like a vision isolated 
in eternity. 


~ 


COAL-DUST 127 


Lovely, grateful silence seemed to trail behind the receding 
train. How sweet the silence was! Ursula looked with hatred 
on the buffers of the diminishing wagon. The gate-keeper 
stood ready at the door of his hut, to proceed to open the 
gate. But Gudrun sprang suddenly forward, in front of the 
struggling horse, threw off the latch and flung the gates 
asunder, throwing one-half to the keeper, and running with 
the other half, forwards. Gerald suddenly let go the horse 
and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun. She was not 
afraid. As he jerked aside the mare’s head, Gudrun cried, in 
a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a witch screaming 
out from the side of the road: 

“T should think you’re proud.” 

The words were distinct and formed. The man, twisting 
aside on his dancing horse, looked at her in some surprise, 
some wondering interest. Then the mare’s hoofs had danced 
three times on the drum-like sleepers of the crossing and 
man and horse were bounding springily, unequally up the 
road. 

The two girls watched them go.. The gate-keeper hobbled 
thudding over the logs of the crossing, with his. wooden leg. 
He had fastened the gate. Then he also turned, and called 
to the girls: 

“A masterful young jockey, that; ‘ll have his own road, if 
ever anybody would.” 

“Yes,” cried Ursula, in her hot, overbearing voice. ‘Why 
couldn’t he take the horse away, till the trucks had gone by? 
He’s a fool, and a bully. Does he think it’s manly, to torture 
a horse? It’s a living thing, why should he bully it and 
torture it?” : 

There was a pause, then the gate-keeper shook his head, 
and replied: 

“Yes, it’s as nice a little mare as you could set eyes on— 
beautiful little thing, beautiful. Now you couldn’t see his 
father treat any animal like that—not you. They’re as dif- 
ferent as they welly can be, Gerald Crich and his father—two 
different men, different made.” 

Then there was a pause. 


128 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“But why does he do it?” cried Ursula, “why does he? 
Does he think he’s grand, when he’s bullied a sensitive creature, 
ten times as sensitive as himself?” 

Again there was a cautious pause. Then again the man 
shook his head, as if he would say nothing, but would think 
the more. 

“TI expect he’s got to train the mare to stand to anything,” 
he replied. “A pure-bred Harab—not the sort of breed as 
is used to round here—different sort from our sort altogether. 
They say as he got her from Constantinople.” 

“He would!” said Ursula. ‘“He’d better have left her to 
the Turks, I’m sure they would have had more decency 
towards her.” 

The man went in to drink his can of tea, the girls went on 
down the lane, that was deep in soft black dust. Gudrun was as 
if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight 
of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: 
the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching 
the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of 
soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and 
calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into un- 
utterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible. 

On the left, as the girls walked silently, the coal-:nine lifted 
its great mounds and its patterned head-stocks, the black 
railway with the trucks at rest looked like a harbour just be- 
low, a large bay of railroad with anchored wagons. 

Near the second level-crossing, that went over many bright 
rails, was a farm belonging to the collieries, and a great round 
globe of iron, a disused boiler, huge and rusty and perfectly 
round, stood silently in a paddock by the road. The hens 
were pecking round it, some chickens were balanced on the 
drinking trough, wagtails flew away in among trucks, from 
the water. 

On the other side of the wide crossing, by the road-side, 
was a heap of pale-grey stones for mending the roads, and a 
cart standing, and a middle-aged man with whiskers round 
his face was leaning on his shovel, talking to a young man in 


} 


COAL-DUST 129 


gaiters, who stood by the horse’s head. Both men were facing 
the crossing. 

They saw the two girls appear, small, brilliant figures in the 
near distance, in the strong light of the late afternoon. Both 
wore light, gay summer dresses, Ursula had an orange-col- 
oured knitted coat, Gudrun a pale yellow, Ursula wore canary 
yellow stockings, Gudrun bright rose, the figures of the two 
women seemed to glitter in progress over the wide bay of the 
railway crossing, white and orange and yellow and rose glit- 
tering in motion across a hot world silted with coal-dust. 

The two men stood quite still in the heat, watching. The 
elder was a short, hard-faced energetic man of middle age, 
the younger a labourer of twenty-three or so. They stood in 
silence watching the advance of the sisters. They watched 
whilst the girls drew near, and whilst they passed, and whilst 
they receded down the dusty road, that had dwellings on one 
side, and dusty young corn on the other. 

Then the elder man, with the whiskers round his face, said 
in a prurient manner to the young man: 

“What price that, eh? She’ll do, won’t she?” 

“Which?” asked the young man, eagerly, with a laugh. 

“Her with the red stockings. What d’ you say? I’d give 
my week’s wages for five minutes; what!—just for five 
minutes.” 

Again the young man laughed. 

“Your missis ud have summat to say to you,” he replied. 

Gudrun had turned round and looked at the two men. They 
were to her sinister creatures, standing watching after her, 
by the heap of pale grey slag. She loathed the man with 
whiskers round his face. 

“You're first class, you are,” the man said to her, and to 
the distance. 

“Do you think it would be worth a week’s wages?” said 
the younger man, musing. 

“Do I? Id put ’em bloddy-well down this second—” 

The younger man looked after Gudrun and Ursula objec- 
tively, as if he wished to calculate what there might be, that 


130 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was worth his week’s wages. He shook his head with fatal 
misgiving. 

“No,” he said. “It’s not worth that to me.” 

“TIsn’t?” said the old man. “By God, if it isn’t to me!” 

And he went on shovelling his stones. 

The girls descended between the houses with slate roofs and 
blackish brick walls. The heavy gold glamour of approach- 
ing sunset lay over all the colliery district, and the ugliness 
overlaid with beauty was like a narcotic to the senses. On 
the roads silted with black dust, the rich light fell more 
warmly, more heavily, over all the amorphous squalor a kind 
of magic was cast, from the glowing close of day. 

“It has a foul kind of beauty, this place,” said Gudrun, evi- 
dently suffering from fascination. “Can’t you feel in some 
way, a thick, hot attraction in it? Ican. And it quite stupi- 
fies me.” 

They were passing between blocks of miners’ dwellings. In 
the back yards of several dwellings, a miner could be seen 
washing himself in the open on this hot evening, naked down 
to the loins, his great trousers of moleskin slipping almost 
away. Miners already cleaned were sitting on their heels, 
with their backs near the walls, talking and silent in pure 
physical well-being, tired, and taking physical rest. Their 
voices sounded out with strong intonation, and the broad 
dialect was curiously caressing to the blood. It seemed to 
envelop Gudrun in a labourer’s caress, there was in the whole 
atmosphere a resonance of physical men, a glamorous thick- 
ness of labour and maleness, surcharged in the air. But it 
was universal in the district, and therefore unnoticed by the 
inhabitants. 

To Gudrun, however, it was potent and half-repulsive. She 
could never tell why Beldover was so utterly different from 
London and the south, why one’s whole feelings were different, 
why one seemed to live in another sphere. Now she realised 
that this was the world of powerful, underworld men who 
spent most of their time in the darkness. In their voices 
she could hear the voluptuous resonance of darkness, the 
strong, dangerous underworld, mindless, inhuman. They 


COAL-DUST 131 


sounded also like strange machines, heavy, oiled. The voluptu- 
ousness was like that of machinery, cold and iron. 

It was the same every evening when she came home, she 
seemed to move through a wave of disruptive force, that was 
given off from the presence of thousands of vigorous, under- 
world, half-automatised colliers, and which went to the brain 
and the heart, awaking a fatal desire, and a fatal callousness. 
There came over her a nostalgia for the place. She hated it, 
she knew how utterly cut off it was, how hideous and how 
sickeningly mindless. Sometimes she beat her wings like a 
new Daphne, turning not into a tree but a machine. And yet, 
she was overcome by the nostalgia. She struggled to get more 
and more into accord with the atmosphere of the place, she 
craved to get her satisfaction of it. 

She felt herself drawn out at evening into the main street 
of the town, that was uncreated and ugly, and yet surcharged 
with this same potent atmosphere of intense, dark callousness. 
There were always miners about. They moved with their 
strange, distorted dignity, a certain beauty, and unnatural 
stillness in their bearing, a look of abstraction and half resig- 
nation in their pale, often gaunt faces. They belonged to an- 
other world, they had a strange glamour, their voices were 
full of an intolerable deep resonance, like a machine’s burring, 
a music more maddening than the siren’s long ago. 

She found herself, with the rest of the common women, 
drawn out on Friday evenings to the little market. Friday 
was pay-day for the colliers, and Friday night was market- 
night. Every woman was abroad, every man was out, shop- 
ping with his wife, or gathering with his pals. The pave- 
ments were dark for miles around with people coming in, the 
little market-place on the crown of the hill, and the main 
street of Beldover was black with thickly-crowded men and 
women. 

It was dark, the market-place was hot with kerosene flares, 
which threw a ruddy light on the grave faces of the purchas- 
ing wives, and on the pale abstract faces of the men. The 
air was full of the sound of criers and of people talking, thick 
streams of people moved on the pavements towards the solid 


132 3 WOMEN IN LOVE 


crowd of the market. The shops were blazing and packed 
with women, in the streets were men, mostly men, miners of 
all ages. Money was spent with almost lavish freedom. 

The carts that came could not pass through. They had to 
wait, the driver calling and shouting, till the dense crowd 
‘would make way. Everywhere, young fellows from the out- 
lying districts were making conversation with the girls, stand- 
ing in the road and at the corners. The doors of the public- 
houses were open and full of light, men passed in and out in a 
continual stream, everywhere men were calling out to one 
another, or crossing to meet one another, or standing in little 
gangs and circles, discussing, endlessly discussing. The sense 
of talk, buzzing, jarring, half-secret, the endless mining and 
political wrangling, vibrated in the air like discordant machin- 
ery. And it was their voices which affected Gudrun almost to 
swooning. ‘They aroused a strange, nostalgic ache of desire, 
something almost demoniacal, never to be fulfilled. 

Like any other common girl of the district, Gudrun strolled 
up and down, up and down the length of the brilliant two- 
hundred paces of the pavement nearest the market-place. She 
knew it was a vulgar thing to do; her father and mother could 
not bear it; but the nostalgia came over her, she must be 
among the people. Sometimes she sat among the louts in the 
cinema: rakish-looking, unattractive louts they were. Yet she 
must be among them. 

And, like any other common lass, she found her ‘boy.’ It 
was an electrician, one of the electricians introduced accord- 
ing to Gerald’s new scheme. He was an earnest, clever man, 
a scientist with a passion for sociology. He lived alone in a 
cottage, in lodgings, in Willey Green. He was a gentleman, 
and sufficiently well-to-do. His landlady spread the reports 
about him; he would have a large wooden tub in his bedroom, 
and every time he came in from work, he would have pails 
and pails of water brought up, to bathe in, then he put on 
clean shirt and under-clothing every day, and clean silk socks; 
fastidious and exacting he was in these respects, but in every 
other way, most ordinary and unassuming. 

Gudrun knew all these things. The Brangwen’s house was 


; 


COAL-DUST 133 


one to which the gossip came naturally and inevitably. 
Palmer was in the first place a friend of Ursula’s. But in his 
pale, elegant, serious face there showed the same nostalgia 
that Gudrun felt. He too must walk up and down the street 
on Friday evening. Se he walked with Gudrun, and a friend- 
ship was struck up between them. But he was not in love 
with Gudrun; he really wanted Ursula, but for some strange 
reason, nothing could happen between her and him. He liked 
to have Gudrun about, as a fellow-mind—but that was all. 
And she had no real feeling for him. He was a scientist, he 
had to have a woman to back him. But he was really imper- 
sonal, he had the fineness of an elegant piece of machinery. 
He was too cold, too destructive to care really for women, too 
great an egoist. He was polarised by the men. Individually 
he detested and despised them. In the mass they fascinated 
him, as machinery fascinated him. They were a new sort of 
machinery to him—but incalculable, incalculable. 

So Gudrun strolled the streets with Palmer, or went to the 
cinema with him. And his long, pale, rather elegant face 
flickered as he made his sarcastic remarks. There they were, 
the two of them: two elegants in one sense: in the other sense, 
two units, absolutely adhering to the people, teeming with the 
distorted colliers. The same secret seemed to be working in 
the souls of all alike, Gudrun, Palmer, the rakish young bloods, 
the gaunt, middle-aged men. All had a secret sense of power, 
and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal half-hearted- 
ness, a sort of rottenness in the will. 

Sometimes Gudrun would start aside, see it all, see how she 
was sinking in. And then she was filled with a fury of con- 
tempt and anger. She felt she was sinking into one mass with 
the rest—all so close and intermingled and breathless. It was 
horrible. She stifled. She prepared for flight, feverishly she 
flew to her work. But soon she let go. She started off into 
the country—the darkish, glamorous country. The spell was 


beginning to work again. 


CHAPTER X 
SKETCH-BOOK 


ONE morning the sisters were sketching by the side of 
Willey Water, at the remote end of the lake. Gudrun had 
waded out to a gravelly shoal, and was seated like a Buddhist, 
staring fixedly at the water-plants that rose succulent from 
the mud of the low shores. What she could see was mud, soft, 
oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill, water-plants 
rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and turgid, 
thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark 
lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and 
bronze. But she could feel their turgid fleshy structure as 
in a sensuous vision, she knew how they rose out of the mud, 
she knew how they thrust out from themselves, how they stood 
stiff and succulent against the air. 

Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were 
dozens near the water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out 
of nothingness into a jewel-life, a large black-and-red one stand- 
ing upon a flower and breathing with his soft wings, intoxicat- 
ingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones 
wrestling in the low air; there was a halo round them; ah, 
when they came tumbling nearer they were orange-tips, and 
it was the orange that had made the halo. Ursula rose and 
drifted away, unconscious like the butterflies. — 

Gudrun, absorbed in a stupor of apprehension of surging 
water-plants, sat crouched on the shoal, drawing, not looking 
up for a long time, and then staring unconsciously, absorbedly 
at the rigid, naked, succulent stems. Her feet were bare, her 
hat lay on the bank opposite. | 

She started out of her trance, hearing the knocking of oars. 
She loaked round. There was a boat with a gaudy Japanese 
parasol, and a man in white, rowing. The woman was Her- 

134 


SKETCH-BOOK 135 


mione, and the man was Gerald. She knew it instantly. And 
instantly she perished in the keen frisson of anticipation, an 
electric vibration in her veins, intense, much more intense than 
that which was always humming low in the atmosphere of 
Beldover. 

Gerald was her escape from the heavy slough of the pale, 
underworld, automatic colliers. He started out of the mud. 
He was master. She saw his back, the movement of his white 
loins. But not that—it was the whiteness he seemed to enclose 
as he bent forwards, rowing. He seemed to stoop to some- 
thing. His glistening, whitish hair seemed like the electricity 
of the sky. 

“There’s Gudrun,” came Hermione’s voice floating distinct 
over the water. “We will go and speak to her. Do you 
mind?” 

Gerald looked round and saw the girl standing by the water’s 
edge, looking at him. He pulled the boat towards her, mag- 
netically, without thinking of her. In his world, his conscious 
world, she was still nobody. He knew that Hermione had a 
curious pleasure in treading down all the social differences, at 
least apparently, and he left it to her. 

“How do you do, Gudrun?” sang Hermione, using the Chris- 
tian name in the fashionable manner. “What are you doing?” 

“How do you do, Hermione? I was sketching.” 

“Were you?” The boat drifted nearer, till the keel ground 
on the bank. “May wesee? I should like to so much.” 

It was no use resisting Hermione’s deliberate intention. 

“Well—” said Gudrun reluctantly, for she always hated to 
have her unfinished work exposed—“there’s nothing in the 
least interesting.” | 

“Isn’t there? But let me see, will you?” 

Gudrun reached out the sketch-book, Gerald stretched from 
the boat to take it. And as he did so, he remembered Gudrun’s 
last words to him, and he face lifted up to him as he sat on 
the swerving horse. An intensification of pride went over his 
nerves, because he felt, in some way she was compelled by 
him. The exchange of feeling between them was strong and 
apart from their consciousness. 


136 WOMEN IN LOVE 


And as if in a spell, Gudrun was aware of his body, stretch- 
ing and surging like the marsh-fire, stretching towards her, 
his hand coming straight forward like a stem. Her voluptuous, . 
acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in her veins, 
her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the 
water perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He 
looked round at the boat. It was drifting off a little. He 
lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisité pleasure of 
slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was com- 
plete as a swoon. 

“That’s what you have done,” said Hermione, jnakind 
searchingly at the plants on the shore, and comparing with 
Gudrun’s drawing. Gudrun looked round in the direction of 
Hermione’s long, pointing finger. ‘That is it, isn’t it?” re- 
peated Hermione needing confirmation. 

“Yes,” said Gudrun automatically, taking no real heed. 

“Let me look,” said Gerald, reaching forward for the book. 
But Hermione ignored him, he must not presume, before she 
had finished. But he, his will as unthwarted and as unflinch- 
ing as hers, stretched forward till he touched the book. A 
little shock, a storm of revulsion against him, shook Her- 
mione unconsciously. She released the book when he had not 
properly got it, and it tumbled against the side of the boat 
and bounced into the water. 

“There!”’ sang Hermione, with a strange ring of malevolent 
victory. “I’m so sorry, so awfully sorry. Can’t you get it, 
Gerald?” 

This last was said in a note of anxious sneering that made 
Gerald’s veins tingle with fine hate for her. He leaned far out 
of the boat, reaching down into the water. He could feel his 

position was ridiculous, his loins exposed behind him. 
’ “Tt is of no importance,” came the strong, clanging voice 
of Gudrun. She seemed to touch him. But he reached fur- 
ther, the boat swayed violently. Hermione, however, remained 
unperturbed. He grasped the book, under the water, and 
brought it up, dripping. 

“I’m so dreadfully sorry—dreadfully sorry,” repeated Her- 
mione. “I’m afraid it was all my fault.” 


SKETCH-BOOK 137 


“Tt’s of no importance—really, I assure you—it doesn’t 
matter in the least,” said Gudrun loudly, with emphasis, her 
face flushed scarlet. And she held out her hand impatiently 
for the wet book, to have done with the scene. Gerald gave 
it to her. He was not quite himself. 

“I’m so dreadfully sorry,” repeated Hermione, till both 
Gerald and Gudrun were exasperated. “Is there nothing that 
can be done?” 

“In what way?” asked Gudrun, with cool irony. 

“Can’t we save the drawings?” 

There was a moment’s pause, wherein Gudrun made evident 
all her refutation of Hermione’s persistence. 

“T assure you,” said Gudrun, with cutting distinctness, “the 
drawings are quite as good as ever they were, for my purpose. 
I want them only for reference.” 

“But can’t I give you a new book? I wish you’d let me do 
that. I feel so truly sorry. I feel it was all my fault.” 

“As far as I saw,” said Gudrun, “it wasn’t your fault at 
all. If there was any fault, it was Mr. Crich’s. But the whole 
thing is entirely trivial, and it really is ridiculous to take any 
notice of it.” 

Gerald watched Gudrun closely, whilst she repulsed Her- 
mione. There was a body of cold power in her. He watched 
her with an insight that amounted to clairvoyance. He saw 
her a dangerous, hostile spirit, that could stand undiminished 
and unabated. It was so finished, and of such perfect gesture, 
moreover. 

“I’m awfully glad if it doesn’t matter,” he said; “if there’s 
no real harm done.” 

She looked back at him, with her fine blue eyes, and sig- 
nalled full into his spirit, as she said, her voice ringing with 
intimacy almost caressive now it was addressed to him: 

“Of course, it doesn’t matter in the least.” 

The bond was established between them, in that look, in 
her tone. In her tone, she made the understanding clear— 
they were of the same kind, he and she, a sort of diabolic free- 
masonry subsisted between them. MHenceforward, she knew, 
she had her power over him. Wherever they met, they would 


138 WOMEN IN LOVE 


be secretly associated. And he would be helpless in the associa- 
tion with her. Her soul exulted. 

“Good-bye! I’m so glad you forgive me. G-0-0-0-0-d-b-y-e!” 

Hermione sang her farewell, and waved her hand. Gerald 
automatically took the oar and pushed off. But he was look- 
ing all the time, with a glimmering, subtly-smiling admiration 
in his eyes, at Gudrun, who stood on the shoal shaking the 
wet book in her hand. She turned away and ignored the reced- 
ing boat. But Gerald looked back as he rowed, beholding her, 
forgetting what he was doing. 

“Aren’t we going too much to the left?” sang Hermione, 
as she sat ignored under her coloured parasol. 

Gerald looked round without replying, the oars balanced and 
glancing in the sun. 

“EF think it’s all right,” he said good-humouredly, begin- 
ning to row again without thinking of what he was doing. 
And Hermione disliked him extremely for his good- 
humoured obliviousness, she was nullified, she could not regain 
ascendancy. 


CHAPTER XI 
AN ISLAND 


MEANWHILE Ursula had wandered on from Willey Water 
along the course of the bright little stream. The afternoon 
was full of larks’ singing. On the bright hill-sides was a sub- 
dued smoulder of gorse. A few forget-me-nots flowered by the 
water. There was a rousedness and a glancing everywhere. 

She strayed absorbedly on, over the brooks. She wanted 
to go to the mill-pond above. The big mill-house was deserted, 
save for a labourer and his wife who lived in the kitchen. So 
she passed through the empty farm-yard and through the 
wilderness of a garden, and mounted the bank by the sluice. 
When she got to the top, ‘to see the old, velvety surface of the 
pond before her, she noticed a man on the bank, tinkering 
with a punt. It was Birkin sawing and hammering away. 

She stood at the head of the sluice looking at him. He was 
unaware of anybody’s presence. He looked very busy, like a 
wild animal, active and intent. She felt she ought to go away, 
he would not want her. He seemed to be so much occupied. 
But she did not want to go away. Therefore she moved along 
the bank till he would look up. 

Which he soon did. The moment he saw her, he dropped 
his tools and came forward, saying: 

“How do you do? I’m making the punt water-tight. Tell 
me if you think it is right.” 

She went along with him. 

“You are your father’s daughter, so you can tell me if it 
will do,” he said. 

She bent to look at the patched punt. 

“T am sure I am my father’s daughter,” she said, fearful of 
having to judge. “But I don’t know anything about car- 
pentry. It looks right, don’t you think?” 

139 


140 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Yes, I think. I hope it won’t let me to the bottom, that’s 
all. Though even so, it isn’t a great matter, I should come up 
again. Help me to get it into the water, will you?” 

With combined efforts they turned over the heavy punt and 
set it afloat. 

“Now,” he said, “Ill try it and you can watch what hap- 
pens. Then if it carries, I’ll take you over to the island.” 

“Do,” she cried, watching anxiously. 

The pond was large, and had that perfect siilnaes and the 
dark lustre of very deep water. There were two small islands 
overgrown with bushes and a few trees, towards the middle. 
Birkin pushed himself off, and veered clumsily in the pond. 
Luckily the punt drifted so that he could catch hold of a 
willow bough, and pull it to the island. 

“Rather overgrown,” he said, looking into the interior, “but 
very nice. I'll come and fetch you. The boat leaks a little.” 

In a moment he was with her again, and she stepped into the 
wet punt. 

“Tt7ll float us all right,” he said, and manceuvred again to 
the island. 

They landed under a willow tree. She shrank from the 
little jungle of rank plants before her, evil-smelling fig-wort 
and hemlock. But he explored into it. 

“T shall mow this down,” he said, “and then it will be 
romantic—like Paul et Virginie.” 

“Yes, one could have lovely Watteau picnics here,” cried 
Ursula with enthusiasm. 

His face darkened. 

“TI don’t want Watteau picnics here,” he said. 

“Only your Virginie,” she laughed.. 

“Virginie enough,” he smiled wryly. ‘No, I don’t want her 
either.” 

Ursula looked at him closely. She had not seen him since 
Breadalby. He was very thin and hollow, with a ghastly look 
in his face. 

“You have been ill, haven’t you?” she asked, rather re- 
pulsed. 

“Yes,” he replied coldly. 


} 


AN ISLAND I4I 


They had sat down under the willow tree, and were looking 
at the pond, from their retreat on the island. 

“Has it made you frightened?” she asked. 

“What of?” he asked, turning his eyes to look at her. Some- 
thing in him, inhuman and unmitigated, disturbed her, and 
shook her out of her ordinary self. 

“Tt is frightening to be very ill, isn’t it?” she said. 

“Tt isn’t pleasant,” he said. ‘Whether one is really afraid 
of death, or not, I have never decided. In one mood, not a 
bit, in another, very much.” 

“But doesn’t it make you feel ashamed? I think it makes 
one so ashamed, to be ill—illness is so terribly humiliating, 
don’t you think?” 

He considered for some minutes. 

“May-be,” he said. “Though one knows all the time one’s 
life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the humiliation. 
I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One 
is ill because one doesn’t live properly—can’t. It’s the failure 
to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.” 

“But do you fail to live?” she asked, almost jeering. 

“Why, yes—I don’t make much of a success of my days. 
One seems always to be bumping one’s nose against the blank 
wall ahead.” 

Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was 
frightened she always laughed and pretended to be jaunty. 

“Your poor nose!” she said, looking at that feature of his 
face. 

“No wonder it’s ugly,” he replied. 

She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own 
self-deception. It was an instinct in her, to deceive herself. 
“But I’m happy—lI think life is awfully jolly,” she said. 

“Good,” he answered, with a certain cold indifference. 

She reached for a bit of paper which had wrapped a small 
piece of chocolate she had found in her pocket, and began 
making a boat. He watched her without heeding her. There 
was something strangely pathetic and tender in her moving, 
unconscious finger-tips, that were agitated and hurt, really. 

“T do enjoy things—don’t you?” she asked. 


142 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Oh, yes! But it infuriates me that I can’t get right, at 
the really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed 
up, and I can’t get straight anyhow. I don’t know what really 
to do. One must do something somewhere.” 

“Why should you always be doing?” she retorted. “It is 
so plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, 
and to do nothing but just be oneself, like a walking flower.” 

“I quite agree,” he said, “if one has burst into blossom. 
But I can’t get my flower to blossom anyhow. Either it is 
blighted in the bud, or has got the smother-fly, or it isn’t 
nourished. Curse it, it isn’t even a bud. It is a contravened 
knot.” 

Again she laughed. He was so very fretful and exasperated. 
But she was anxious and puzzled. How was one to get nt, 
anyhow. There must be a way out somewhere. 

There was a silence, wherein she wanted to cry.» She reached 
for another bit of ehucolate paper, and began to fold another 
boat. 

“And why is it,” she asked at length, “that there is no 
flowering, no dignity of human life now?” 

“The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, 
really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the 
bush—and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young 
men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter 
of fact. Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn’t true that they 
have any significance—their insides are full of bitter, corrupt 
ash.” 

“But there are good people,” protested Ursula. 

“Good enough for the life of to-day. But mankind is a 
dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.” 

Ursula could not help stiffening herself against this, it was 
too picturesque and final. But neither could she help making 
him go on. 

“And if it is so, why is it?” she asked hostile. They were 
rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition. 

“Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because 
they won’t fall off the tree when they’re ripe. They hang on 


, 


AN ISLAND 143 


to their old positions when the position is overpast, till they 
become infested with little worms and dry-rot.” 

There was a long pause. His voice had become hot and 
very sarcastic. Ursula was troubled and bewildered, they 
were both oblivious of everything but their own immersion. 

“But even if everybody is wrong—where are you right?” 
she cried, “where are you any better?” 

“1?—I’m not right,” he cried back. “At least my only right- 
ness lies in the fact that I know it. I detest what I am, out- 
wardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge 
aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Human- 
ity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual 
may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree 
of lies. And they say that love is the greatest thing; they 
persist in saying this, the foul liars, and just look at what 
they do! Look at all the millions of people who repeat every 
minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest 
—and see what they are doing all the time. By their works 
ye shall know them, for dirty liars and cowards, who daren’t 
stand by their own actions, much less by their own words.” 

“But,” said Ursula sadly, “that doesn’t alter the fact that 
love is the greatest, does it? What they do doesn’t alter the 
truth of what they say, does it?” 

“Completely, because if what they say were true, then they 
couldn’t help fulfilling it. But they maintain a lie, and so 
they run amok at last. It’s a lie to say that love is the 
greatest. You might as well say that hate is the greatest, 
since the opposite of everything balances. What people want 
is hate—hate and nothing but hate. And in the name of 
righteousness and love, they get it. They distil themselves 
with nitro-glycerine, all the lot of them, out of very love. 
It’s the lie that kills. If we want hate, let us have it—death, 
murder, torture, violent destruction—let us have it: but not 
in the name of love. But I abhor humanity, I wish it was 
swept away. It could go, and there would be no absolute 
loss, if every human being perished to-morrow. The reality 
would be untouched. Nay, it would be better. The real 
tree of life would then be rid of the most ghastly, heavy crop 


144 WOMEN IN LOVE 


of Dead Sea Fruit, the intolerable burden of myriad simulacra 
of people, an infinite weight of mortal lies.” 

“So you’d like everybody in the world destroyed?” said 
Ursula. 

“T should indeed.” 

“And the world empty of people?” 

“Yes, truly. You yourself, don’t you find it a beautiful 
clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted 
grass, and a hare sitting up?” 

The pleasant sincerity of his voice made Ursula pause to 
consider her own proposition. And really it was attractive: 
a clean, lovely, humanless world. It was the readly desirable. 
Her heart hesitated, and exulted. But still, she was dissatisfied 
with him. 

“But,” she objected, “you’d be dead yourself, so what good 
would it do you?” 

“TJ would die like a shot, to know that the earth would 
really be cleaned of all the people. It is the most beautiful 
and freeing thought. Then there would ever be another foul 
humanity created, for a universal defilement.” 

“No,” said Ursula, “there would be nothing.” 

“What! Nothing? Just because humanity was wiped out? 
You flatter yourself. There’d be everything.” 

“But how, if there were no people?” 

“Do you think that creation depends on man? It merely 
doesn’t. There are the trees and the grass and birds. I much 
prefer to think of the lark rising up in the morning upon a 
humanless world. Man is a mistake, he must go. There is 
the grass, and hares and adders, and the unseen hosts, actual 
angels that go about freely when a dirty humanity doesn’t 
interrupt them—and good pure-tissued demons: very nice.” 

It pleased Ursula, what he said, pleased her very much, as a 
phantasy. Of course it was only a pleasant fancy. She 
herself knew too well the actuality of humanity, its hideous 
actuality. She knew it could not disappear so cleanly and 
conveniently. It had a long way to go yet, a long and hideous 
way. Her subtle, feminine, demoniacal soul knew it well. 

“If only man was swept off the face of the earth, creation 


AN ISLAND 145 


would go on so marvellously, with a new start, non-human. 
Man is one of the mistakes of creation—like the ichthyosauri. 
If only he were gone again, think what lovely things would 
come out of the liberated days;—things straight out of the 
fire.” 

“But man will never be gone,” she said, with insidious, 
diabolical knowledge of the horrors of persistence. ‘‘The world 
will go with him.” 

“Ah, no,” he answered, “not so. I believe in the proud 
angels and the demons that are our fore-runners. They will 
destroy us, because we are not proud enough. The ichthyo- 
sauri were not proud: they crawled and floundered as we do. 
And besides, look at elder-flowers and bluebells—they are a 
sign that pure creation takes place—even the butterfly. But 
humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage—it rots in 
the chrysalis, it never will have wings. It is anti-creation, 
like monkeys and baboons.” 

Ursula watched him as he talked. There seemed a certain 
impatient fury in him, all the while, and at the same time a 
great amusement in everything, and a great tolerance. 
And it was this tolerance she mistrusted, not the fury. 
She saw that, all the while, in spite of himself, he would 
have to be trying to save the world. And this knowledge, 
whilst it comforted her heart somewhere with a little self- 
satisfaction, stability, yet filled her with a certain sharp 
contempt and hate of him. She wanted him to herself, she 
hated the Salvator Mundi touch. It was something diffuse 
and generalised about him, which she could not stand. He 
would behave in the same way, say the same things, give 
himself as completely to anybody who came along, anybody 
and everybody who liked to appeal to him. It was despicable, 
a very insidious form of prostitution. 

“But,” she said, “you believe in individual love, even if you 
don’t believe in loving humanity—?” 

“T don’t believe in love at all—that is, any more than ] 
believe in hate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like 
all the others—and so it is all right whilst you feel it. But 1 
can’t see how it becomes an absolute. It is just part of 


146 WOMEN IN LOVE 


human relationships, no more. And it is only part of any 
human relationship. And why one should be required always 
to feel it, any more than one always feels sorrow or distant 
joy, I cannot conceive. Love isn’t a desideratum—it is an 
emotion you feel or you don’t feel, according to circumstance.” 

“Then why do you care about people at all,” she asked, 
“if you don’t believe in love? Why do you bother about 
humanity?” “wh 

“Why do I? Because I can’t get away from it.” 

“Because you love it,” she persisted. 

It irritated him. 

“Tf I do love it,” he said, “it is my disease.” 

“But it is a disease you don’t want to be cured of,’’ she said, 
with some cold sneering. 

He was silent now, feeling she wanted to insult him. 

“And if you don’t believe in love, what do you believe in?” 
she asked mocking. “Simply in the end of the world, and 
grass?” 

He was beginning to feel a fool.. 

“T believe in the unseen hosts,” he said. 

“And nothing else? You believe in nothing visible, except 
grass and birds? Your world is a poor show.” 

“Perhaps it is,’ he said, cool and superior now he was 
offended, assuming a certain insufferable priggish superiority, 
and withdrawing into his distance. 

Ursula disliked him. But also she felt she had lost something. 
She looked at him as he sat crouched on the bank. There was 
a certain priggish Sunday-school stiffness over him, priggish 
and detestable. And yet, at the same time, the moulding of 
him was so quick and attractive, it gave such a great sense 
of freedom: the moulding of his brows, his chin, his whole 
physique, something so alive, somewhere, in spite of the look 
of sickness. 

And it was this duality in feeling which he created in her, 
that made a fine hate of him quicken in her bowels. There 
was his wonderful, desirable life-rapidity, the rare quality of 
an utterly desirable man: and there was at the same time this 


; 


AN ISLAND 147 


ridiculous, mean effacement into a Salvator Mundi and a 
Sunday-school teacher, a prig of the stiffest type. 

He looked up at her. He saw her face strangely enkindled, 
as if suffused from within by a powerful sweet fire. His soul 
was arrested in wonder. She was enkindled in her own living 
fire. Arrested in wonder and in pure, perfect attraction, he 
moved towards her. She sat like a strange queen, almost 
supernatural in her glowing smiling richness. 

“The point about love,’”’ he said, his consciousness quickly 
adjusting itself, “is that we hate the word because we have 
vulgarised it. It ought to be prescribed, tabooed from utter- 
ance, for many years, till we get a new, better idea.” 

There was a beam of understanding between them. 

“But it always means the same thing,” she said. 

“Ah God, no, let it not mean that any more,” he cried. 
“Let the old meanings go.” 

“But still it is love,” she persisted. A strange, wicked yellow 
light shone at him in her eyes. 

He hesitated, baffled, withdrawing. 

“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Spoken like that, never in the 
world. You’ve no business to utter the word.” : 

“T must leave it to you, to take it out of the Ark of the 
Covenant at the right moment,” she mocked. 

Again they looked at each other. She suddenly sprang 
up, turned her back to him, and walked away. He too rose 
slowly and went to the water’s edge, where, crouching, he 
began to amuse himself unconsciously. Picking a daisy he 
dropped it on the pond, so that the stem was a keel, the flower 
floated like a little water lily, staring with its open face up to 
the sky. It turned slowly round, in a slow, slow Dervish 
dance, as it veered away. 

He watched it, then dropped another daisy into the water, 
and after that another, and sat watching them with bright, 
absolved eyes, crouching near on the bank. Ursula turned 
to look. A strange feeling possessed her, as if something were 
taking place. But it was all intangible. And some sort of 
control was being put on her. She could not know. She could 
only watch the brilliant little discs of the daisies veering slowly 


148 WOMEN IN LOVE 


in travel on the dark, lustrous water. The little flotilla was 
drifting into the light, a company of white specks in the 
distance. 

“Do let us go to the shore, to follow them,” she said, afraid 
of being any longer imprisoned on the island. And they 
pushed off in the punt. ; 

She was glad to be on the free land again. She went along 
the bank towards the sluice. The daisies were scattered 
broadcast on the pond, tiny radiant things, like an exaltation, 
points of exaltation here and there. Why did they move her 
so strongly and mystically? 7 

“Look,” he said, ‘your boat of purple paper is escorting 
them, and they are a convoy of rafts.” 

Some of the daisies came slowly towards her, hesitating, 
making a shy bright little cotillon on the dark clear water. 
Their gay bright candour moved her so much as they came 
near, that she was almost in tears. 

“Why are they so lovely?” she cried. “Why do I think 
them so lovely?” 

“They are nice flowers,” he said, her emotional tones putting 
a constraint on him. 

“You know that a daisy is a company of florets, a concourse, 
become individual. Don’t the botanists put it highest in the 
line of development? I believe they do.” 

“The composite, yes, I think so,” said Ursula, who was 
never very sure of anything. Things she knew perfectly well, 
at one moment, seemed to become doubtful the next. 

“Explain it so, then,” he said. “The daisy is a perfect 
little democracy, so it’s the highest of flowers, hence its charm.” 

“No,” she cried, “no—never. It isn’t democratic.” 

“No,” he admitted. “It’s the golden mob of the proletariat, 
surrounded by a showy white fence of the idle rich.” 

“How hateful—your hateful social orders!” she cried. 

“Quite! It’s a daisy—we’ll leave it alone.’ 

“Do. Let it be a dark horse for once,” she said: “if 
anything can be a dark horse to you,” she added satirically. 

They stood aside, forgetful. As if a little stunned, they both 
were motionless, barely conscious. ‘The little conflict into 


AN ISLAND 149 


which they had fallen had torn their consciousness and left 
them like two impersonal forces, there in contact. 

He became aware of the lapse. He wanted to say something, 
to get on to a new more ordinary footing. 

“You know,” he said, “that I am having rooms here at the 
mill? Don’t you think we can have some good times?” 

“Oh are you?” she said, ignoring all his implication of 
admitted intimacy. 

He adjusted himself at once, became normally distant. 

“If I find I can live sufficiently by myself,” he continued, 
“T shall give up my work altogether. It has become dead to 
me. I don’t believe in the humanity I pretend to be part 
of, I don’t care a straw for the social ideals I live by, I hate 
the dying organic form of social mankind—so it can’t be 
anything but trumpery, to work at education. I shall drop it 
as soon as I am clear enough—to-morrow perhaps—and be by 
myself.” | 

“Have you enough to live on?” asked Ursula. 

“Yes—I’ve about four hundred a year. That makes it easy 
for me.” 

There was a pause. 

“And what about Hermione?” asked Ursula. 

“That’s over, finally—a pure failure, and never could have 
been anything else.” 

“But you still know each other?” 

“We could hardly pretend to be strangers, could we?” 

There was a stubborn pause. 

“But isn’t that a half-measure?” asked Ursula at length. 

“T don’t think so,” he said. ‘You'll be able to tell me if 
it is.” 

Again there was a pause of some minutes’ duration. He 
was thinking. 

“One must throw everything away, everything—let every- 
thing go, to get the one last thing one wants,” he said. 

“What thing?” she asked in challenge. 

“T don’t know—freedom together,” he said. 

She had wanted him to say ‘love.’ 

There was heard a loud barking of the dogs below. He 


150 WOMEN IN LOVE 


seemed disturbed by it. She did not notice. Only she thought 
he seemed uneasy. 

“As a matter of fact,” he said, in rather a small voice, “I 
believe that is Hermione come now, with Gerald Crich. She 
wanted to see the rooms before they are furnished.” 

“T know,” said Ursula. “She will superintend the furnishing 
for you.” 

“Probably. Does it matter?” 

“Ob no, I should think not,” said Ursula. “Though per- 
sonally, I can’t bear her. I think she is a lie, if you like, you 
who are always talking about lies.” Then she ruminated for a 
moment, when she broke out: “Yes, and I do mind if she 
furnishes your rooms—I do mind. I mind that you keep her 
hanging on at all.” 

He was silent now, frowning. 

“Perhaps,” he said. “I don’t want her to furnish the rooms 
here—and I don’t keep her hanging on. Only, I needn’t be 
churlish to her, need I? At any rate, I shall have te go down 
and see them now. You'll come, won’t you?” 

“T don’t think so,” she said coldly and irresolutely. 

“Won’t you? Yes do. Come and see the rooms as well. 
Do come.” 


CHAPTER XII 
CARPETING 


He set off down the bank, and she went unwillingly with 
him. Yet she would not have stayed away, either. 

“We know each other well, you and I, already,” he said. 
She did not answer. 

In the large darkish kitchen of the mill, the labourer’s wife 
was talking shrilly to Hermione and Gerald, who stood, he 
in white and she in a glistening bluish foulard, strangely 
luminous in the dusk of the room; whilst from the cages on the 
walls, a dozen or more canaries sang at the top of their voices. 
The cages were all placed round a small square window at the 
back, where the sunshine came in, a beautiful beam, filtering 
through green leaves of a tree. The voice of Mrs. Salmon 
shrilled against the noise of the birds, which rose ever more 
wild and triumphant, and the woman’s voice went up and up 
against them, and the birds replied with wild animation. 

“Ffere’s Rupert!” shouted Gerald in the midst of the din. 
He was suffering badly, being very sensitive in the ear. 

“O-o-h them birds, they won’t let you speak!” shrilled the 
labourer’s wife in disgust. “I'll cover them up.” 

And she darted here and there, throwing a duster, an apron, 
a towel, a table-cloth over the cages of the birds. 

“Now will you stop it, and let a body speak for your row,” 
she said, still in a voice that was too high. 

The party watched her. Soon the cages were covered, they 
had a strange funereal look. But from under the towels odd 
defiant trills and bubblings still shook out. 

“Oh, they won’t go on,” said Mrs. Salmon reassuringly. 
“They'll go to sleep now.” 

“Really,” said Hermione, politely. 

151 


152 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“They will,” said Gerald. “They will go to sleep auto- 
matically, now the impression of evening is produced.” 

“Are they so easily deceived?” cried Ursula. 

“Oh, yes,” replied Gerald. “Don’t you know the story of 
Fabre, who, when he was a boy, put a hen’s head under her 
wing, and she straight away went to sleep? It’s quite true.” 

“And did that make him a naturalist?” asked Birkin. 

“Probably,” said Gerald. ; ‘ 

Meanwhile Ursula was peeping under one of the cloths. 
There sat the canary in a corner, bunched and fluffed up for 
sleep. 

“How ridiculous!” she cried. “It really thinks the night 
has come! How absurd! Really, how can one have any 
respect for a creature that is so easily taken in!” 

“Yes,” sang Hermione, coming also to look. She put her 
hand on Ursula’s arm and chuckled a low laugh. “Yes, doesn’t: 
he look comical?” she chuckled. “Like a stupid husband.” 

Then, with her hand still on Ursula’s arm, she drew her 
away, saying, in her mild sing-song: 

“How did you come here? We saw Gudrun too.” 

“T came to look at the pond,” said Ursula, “and I found 
Mr. Birkin there.” 

“Did you? This is quite a Brangwen land, isn’t it!” 

“T’m afraid I hoped so,” said Ursula. “I ran here for refuge, 
when I saw you down the lake, just putting off.” 

“Did you! And now we’ve run you to earth.” 

Hermione’s eyelids lifted with an uncanny movement, 
amused but overwrought. She had always her strange, rapt 
look, unnatural and irresponsible. 

“T was going on,” said Ursula. “Mr. Birkin wanted me to 
see the rooms. Isn’t it delightful to live here? It is perfect.” 

“Yes,” said Hermione, abstractedly. Then she turned right 
away from Ursula, ceased to know her existence. 

“How do you feel, Rupert?” she sang in a new, affectionate 
tone, to Birkin. 

“Very well,” he replied. 

“Were you quite comfortable?” The curious, sinister, rapt 


; 


CARPETING 153 


look was on Hermione?s face, she shrugged her bosom in a con- 
vulsed movement, and seemed like one half in a trance. 

“Quite comfortable,” he replied. 

There was a long pause, whilst Hermione looked at him for 
a long time, from under her heavy, drugged eyelids. 

“And you think you'll be happy here?” she said at last. 

“T’m sure I shall.” 

“I’m sure I shall do anything for him as I can,” said the 
labourer’s wife. ‘And I’m sure our mester will; so I kope as 
he'll find himself comfortable.” 

Hermione turned and looked at her slowly. 

“Thank you so much,” she said, and then she turned 
completely away again. She recovered her position, lifting her 
face towards him, and addressing him exclusively, she said: 

“Have you measured the rooms?” 

“No,” he said, “I’ve been mending the punt.” 

“Shall we do it now?” she said slowly, balanced and 
dispassionate. 

“Have you got a tape measure, Mrs. Salmon?’ he said, 
turning to the woman. 

“Yes, sir, I think I can find one,” replied the woman, 
bustling immediately to a basket. ‘This is. the only one I’ve 
got, if it will do.” 

Hermione took it, though it was offered to him. : 

“Thank you so much,” she said. “It will do very nicely. 
Thank you so much.” Then she turned to Birkin, saying with 
a little gay movement: “Shall we do it now, Rupert?” 

“What about the others, they’ll be bored,” he said reluctantly. 

“Do you mind?” said Hermione, turning to Ursula and 
Gerald vaguely. 

“Not in the least,” they replied. 

“Which room shall we do first?” she said, turning again to 
Birkin, with the same gaiety, now she was going to do some- 
thing with him. 

“We'll take them as they come,” he said. 

“Should I be getting your teas ready, while you do that?” 
said the labourer’s wife, also gay because she had something 
to do. 


154 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Would you?” said Hermione, turning to her with the 
curious motion of intimacy that seemed to envelop the woman, 
draw her almost to Hermione’s breast, and which left the 
others standing apart. “I should be so glad. Where shall we 
have it?” 

“Where would you like it? Shall it be in here, or out on the 
grass?” . 

“Where shall we have tea?” sang Hermione to the company 
at large. 

“On the bank by the pond. And we'll carry the things up, 
if you'll just get them ready, Mrs. Salmon,” said Birkin. 

“All right,” said the pleased woman. 

The party moved down the passage into the front room. It 
was empty, but clean and sunny. There was a window looking 
on to the tangled front garden. 

“This is the dining room,” said Hermione. “We'll measure 
it this way, Rupert—you go down there—” 

“Can’t I do it for you?” said Gerald, coming to take the 
end of the tape. 

“No, thank you,” cried Hermione, stooping to the ground 
in her bluish, brilliant foulard. It was a great joy to her to do 
things, and to have the ordering of the job, with Birkin. He 
obeyed her subduedly. Ursula and Gerald looked on. It was 
a peculiarity of Hermione’s, that at every moment, she had 
one intimate, and ‘turned all the rest of those present into 
onlookers. This raised her into a state of triumph. 

They measured and discussed in the dining-room, and 
Hermione decided what the floor coverings must be. It sent 
her into a strange, convulsed anger, to be thwarted. Birkin 
always let her have her way, for the moment. 

Then they moved across, through the hall, to the other front 
room, that was a little smaller than the first. 

“This is the study,” said Hermione. “Rupert, I have a rug 
that I want you to have for here. Will you let me give it to 
you? Do—I want to give it you.” 

“What is it like?” he asked ungraciously. 

“You haven’t seen it. It is chiefly rose red, then blue, a 
metallic, mid-blue, and a very soft dark blue. I think you 
would like it. Do you think you would?” 


CARPETING 155 


“Tt sounds very nice,” he replied. “What is it? Oriental? 
With a pile?” 

“Yes. Persian! It is made of camel’s hair, silky. I think 
it is called Bergamos—twelve feet by seven—. Do you think 
it will do?” 

“It would do,” he said. “But why should you give me an 
expensive rug? I can manage perfectly well with my old 
Oxford Turkish.” 

“But may I give it to you? Do let me.” 

“How much did it cost?” 

She looked at him, and said: 

“T don’t remember. It was quite cheap.” 

He looked at her, his face set. 

“T don’t want to take it, Hermione,” he said. 

“Do let me give it to the rooms,” she said, going up to him 
and putting her hand on his arm lightly, pleadingly. “TI shall 
be so disappointed.” 

“You know I don’t want you to give me things,” he repeated 
helplessly. 

“I don’t want to give you things,” she said teasingly. “But 
will you have this?” 

“All right,” he said, defeated, and she triumphed. 

They went upstairs. There were two bedrooms to corre- 
spond with the rooms downstairs. One of them was half 
furnished, and Birkin had evidently slept there. Hermione 
went round the room carefully, taking in every detail, as if 
absorbing the evidence of his presence, in all the inanimate 
things. She felt the bed and examined the coverings. 

“Are you sure you were quite comfortable?” she said, press- 
ing the pillow. 

“Perfectly,” he replied coldly. 

“And were you warm? There is no down quilt. I am sure 
you need one. You mustn’t have a great pressure of clothes.” 

“T’ve got one,” he said. “It is coming down.” 

They measured the rooms, and lingered over every con- 
sideration. Ursula stood at the window and watched the woman 
carrying the tea up the bank to the pond. She hated the 


156 WOMEN IN LOVE 


palaver Hermione made, she wanted to drink tea, she wanted 
anything but this fuss and business. 

At last they all mounted the grassy bank, to the picnic. 
Hermione poured out tea. She ignored now Ursula’s presence. 
And Ursula, recovering from her ill-humour, turned to Gerald 
saying: 

“Oh, I hated you so much the other day, Mr. Crich.” 

“What for?” said Gerald, wincing slightly away. 

“For treating your horse so badly. Oh, I hated you so 
much!” , 

“What did he do?” sang Hermione. 

“He made his lovely sensitive Arab horse stand with him 
at the railway-crossing whilst a horrible lot of trucks went 
by; and the poor thing, she was in a perfect frenzy, a perfect 
agony. It was the most horrible sight you can imagine.” 

“Why iid you do it, Gerald?” asked Hermione, calm ane 
interrogative. 

“She must learn to stand—what use is she to me in this 
country, if she sbies and goes off every time an engine whistles.” 

“But why inflict unnecessary torture?” said Ursula. “Why 
make her stand all that time at the crossing? You might just 
as well have ridden back up the road, and saved all that 
horror. Her sides were bleeding where you had spurred her. 
It was too horrible—!”’ 

Gerald stiffened. 

“T have to use her,” he replied. “And if I’m going to be 
sure of her at ail, she’ll have to learn to stand noises.” 

“Why should she?” cried Ursula in a passion. “She is a 
living creature, why should she stand anything, just because 
you choose to make her? She has as much right to her own 
being, as you have to yours.” 

“There I disagree,” said Gerald. “I consider that mare is 
there for my use. Not because I bought her, but because 
that is the natural order. It is more natural for a man to 
take a horse and use it as he likes, than for him to go down 
on his knees to it, begging it to do as it wishes, and to fulfil 
its own marvellous nature.” 


CARPETING 157 


Ursula was just breaking out, when Hermione lifted her 
face and began, in her musing sing-song: 

“T do think—I do really think we must have the courage 
to use the lower animal life for our needs. I do think there 
is something wrong, when we look on every living creature as 
if it were ourselves. I do feel, that it is false to project our 
own feelings on every animate creature. It is a lack of 
discrimination, a lack of criticism.” 

“Quite,” said Birkin sharply. “Nothing is so detestable as 
the maudlin attributing of human feelings and consciousness 
to animals.” | 

“Yes,” said Hermione, wearily, “we must really take a 
position. Either we are going to use the animals, or they will 
use us.” 

“That’s a fact,” said Gerald. “A horse has got a will like a 
man, though it has no mind, strictly. And if your will isn’t 
master, then the horse is master of you. And this is a thing 
I can’t help. I can’t help being master of the horse.” 

“Tf only we could learn how to use our will,” said Hermione, 
“we could do anything. The will can cure anything, and put 
anything right. That I am convinced of—if only we use the 
will properly, intelligibly.” 

“What do you mean by using the will properly?” said 
Birkin. 7 

“A very great doctor taught me,” she said, addressing Ursula 
and Gerald vaguely. ‘He told me, for instance, that to cure 
oneself of a bad habit, one should force oneself to do it, when 
one would not do it;—make oneself do it—and then the habit 
would disappear.” 

“How do you mean?” said Gerald. 

“If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don’t 
want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. 
And you would find the habit was broken.” 

“Ts that so?” said Gerald. : 

“Yes. And in so many things, I have made myself well. I 
was a very queer and nervous girl. And by learning to use my 
will, simply by using my will, I made myself right.” 

Ursula looked all the while at Hermione, as she spoke in her 


158 WOMEN IN LOVE 


slow, dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice. A curious 
thrill went over the younger woman. Some strange, dark, 
convulsive power was in Hermione, fascinating and repelling. 

“Tt is fatal to use the will like that,” cried Birkin harshly, 
“disgusting. Such a will is an obscenity.” 

Hermione looked at him for a long time, with her shadowed, 
heavy eyes. Her face was soft and pale and thin, almost 
phosphorescent, her jaw was lean. 

“I’m sure it isn’t,” she said at length. There always seemed 
an interval, a strange split between what she seemed to feel 
and experience, and what she actually said and thought. She 
seemed to catch her thoughts at length from off the surface of a 
maelstrom of chaotic black emotions and reactions, and Birkin 
was always filled with repulsion, she caught so infallibly, her 
will never failed her. Her voice was always dispassionate and 
tense, and perfectly confident. Yet she shuddered with a 
sense of nausea, a sort of seasickness that always threatened 
to overwhelm her mind. But her mind remained unbroken, 
her will was still perfect. It almost sent Birkin mad. But 
he would never, never dare to break her will, and let loose 
the maelstrom of her subconsciousness, and see her in her 
ultimate madness. Yet he was always striking at her. 

“And of course,” he said to Gerald, “horses haven’t got a 
complete will, like human beings. A horse has no ome will. 
Every horse, strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants 
to put itself in the human power completely—and with the 
other, it wants to be free, wild. The two wills sometimes lock 
—you know that, if ever you’ve felt a horse bolt, while you’ve 
been driving it.” 

“T have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,” said Gerald, 
“but it didn’t make me know it had two wills. I only knew 
it was frightened.” 

Hermione had ceased to listen. She simply became oblivious 
when these subjects were started. 

“Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?” 
asked Ursula. ‘That is quite incomprehensible to me. I 
don’t believe it ever wanted it.” 


; 


CARPETING 159 


“Yes it did. It’s the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: 
resign your will to the higher being,” said Birkin. 

“What curious notions you have of love,” jeered Ursula. 

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in oppo- 
sition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself 
utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider 
to perdition.” 

“Then I’m a bolter,” said Ursula, with a burst of laughter. 

“It’s a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone 
women,” said Birkin. ‘The dominant principle has some rare 
antagonists.” 

“Good thing too,” said Ursula. 

“Quite,” said Gerald, with a faint smile. “There’s more fun.” 

Hermione could bear no more. She rose, saying in her easy 
sing-song: 

“Tsn’t the evening beautiful! I get filled sometimes with 
such a great sense of beauty, that I feel I can hardly bear it.” 

Ursula, to whom she had appealed, rose with her, moved to 
the last impersonal depths. And Birkin seemed to her almost 
a monster of hateful arrogance. She went with Hermione 
along the bank of the pond, talking of beautiful, soothing 
things, picking the gentle cowslips. 

“Wouldn’t you like a dress,” said Ursula to Hermione, “of 
this yellow spotted with orange—a cotton dress?” 

“Yes,” said Hermione, stopping and looking at the flower, 
letting the thought come home to her and soothe her. 
“Wouldn’t it be pretty? I should love it.” 

And she turned smiling to Ursula, in a feeling of real 
affection. 

But Gerald remained with Birkin, wanting to probe him to 
the bottom, to know what he meant by the dual will in horses. 
A flicker of excitement danced on Gerald’s face. 

Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden 
bond of deep affection and closeness. 

“T really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and 
analysis of life. I really do want to see things in their entirety, 


160 WOMEN IN LOVE 


with their beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their 
natural holiness. Don’t you feel it, don’t you feel. you can’t 
be tortured into any more knowledge?” said Hermione, stopping 
in front of Ursula, and turning to her with clenched fists 
thrust downwards. 

“Yes,” said Ursula. “I do. I am sick of all this poking 
and prying.” 

“I’m so glad you are. Sometimes,” said Hermione, again 
stopping arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula, “‘some- 
times I wonder if I ought to submit to all this realisation, if I 
am not being weak in rejecting it. But I feel I can’t—I can’t. 
It seems to destroy everything. All the beauty and the—and 
the true holiness is destroyed,—and I feel I can’t live without 
them.” | 

“And it would be simply wrong to live without them,” cried 
Ursula. “No, it is so irreverent to think that everything must 
be realised in the head. Really, something must be left to the 
Lord, there always is and always will be.” 

“Yes,” said Hermione, reassured like a child, “it should, 
shouldn’t it? And Rupert—” she lifted her face to the sky, in 
a muse—“he can only tear things to pieces. He really is like 
a boy who must pull everything to pieces to see how it is 
made. And I can’t think it is right—it does seem so irreverent, 
as you say.” 

“Like tearing open a bud to see what the flower will be like,” 
said Ursula. | 

“Ves. And that kills everything, doesn’t it? It doesn’t 
allow any possibility of flowering.” 

“Of course not,” said Ursula. “It is purely destructive.” 

“Tt is, isn’t it!” 

Hermione looked long and slow at Ursula, seeming to accept 
confirmation from her. Then the two women were silent. As 
soon as they were in accord, they began mutually to mistrust 
each other. In spite’ of herself, Ursula felt herself recoiling 
from Hermione. It was all she could do to restrain her 
revulsion. 


CARPETING 161 


They returned to the men, like two conspirators who have 
withdrawn to come to an agreement. Birkin looked up at 
them. Ursula hated him for his cold watchfulness. But he 
said nothing. | 

“Shall we be going?” said Hermione. ‘Rupert, you are 
coming to Shortlands to dinner? Will you come at once, will 
you come now, with us?” 

“T’m not dressed,” replied Birkin. ‘And you know Gerald 
stickles for convention.” 

“T don’t stickle for it,” said Gerald. “But if you’d got as 
sick as I have of rowdy go-as-you-please in the house, you’d 
prefer it if people were peaceful and conventional, at least at 
meals.” 

“All right,” said Birkin. 

“But can’t we wait for you while you dress?” persisted 
Hermione. 

“Tf you like.” 

He rose to go indoors. Ursula said she would take her leave. 

“Only,” she said, turning to Gerald, “I must say that, how- 
ever man is lord of the beast and the fowl, I still don’t think 
he has any right to violate the feelings of the inferior creation. 
I still think it would have been much more sensible and nice 
if you’d trotted back up the road while the train went by, and 
been considerate.” 

“T see,” said Gerald, smiling, but somewhat annoyed. “I 
must remember another time.” 

“They all think I’m an interfering female,” thought Ursula 
to herself, as she went away. But she was in arms against 
them. | 

She ran home plunged in thought. She had been very 
much moved by Hermione, she had really come into contact 
with her, so that there was a sort of league between the two 
women, And yet she could not bear her. But she put the 
thought away. ‘She’s really good,” she said to herself. “She 
really wants what is right.” And she tried to feel at one with 
Hermione, and to shut off from Birkin. She was strictly 


162 WOMEN IN LOVE 


hostile to him. But she was held to him by some bond, some 
deep principle. This at once irritated her and saved her. 

Only now and again, violent little shudders would come over 
her, out of her subconsciousness, and she knew it was the fact 
that she had stated her challenge to Birkin, and he had, 
consciously or unconsciously, accepted. It was a fight to the 
death between them—or to new life: though in what the 
conflict lay, no one could say. 


CHAPTER XIIT 
MINO 


THE days went by, and she received no sign. Was he going 
to ignore her, was he going to take no further notice of her 
secret? A dreary weight of anxiety and acrid bitterness settled 
on her. And yet Ursula knew she was only deceiving herself, 
and that he would proceed. She said no word to anybody. 

Then, sure enough, there came a note from him, asking if 
she would come to tea, with Gudrun, to his rooms in town. 

“Why does he ask Gudrun as well?” she asked herself at 
once. “Does he want to protect himself, or does he think I 
would not go alone?” 

She was tormented by the thought that he wanted to protect 
himself. But at the end of all, she only said to herself: 

“J don’t want Gudrun to be there, because I want him to 
say something more to me. So I shan’t tell Gudrun anything 
about it, and I shall go alone. Then I shall know.” 

She found herself sitting in the tram-car, mounting up the 
hill going out of the town, to the place where he had his lodging. 
She seemed to have passed into a kind of dream world, absolved 
from the conditions of actuality. She watched the sordid 
streets of the town go by beneath her, as if she were a spirit 
disconnected from the material universe. What had it all to 
do with her? She was palpitating and formless within the flux 
of the ghost life. She could not consider any more, what 
anybody would say of her or think about her. People had 
passed out of her range, she was absolved. She had fallen 
strange and dim, out of the sheath of the material life, as a 
berry falls from the only world it has ever known, down out of 
the sheath on to the real unknown. 

Birkin was standing in the middle of the room, when she 

163 


164 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was shown in by the landlady. He too was moved outside 
himself. She saw him agitated and shaken, a frail, unsubstan- 
tial body silent like the node of some violent force, that came 
out from him and shook her almost into a swoon. 

“You are alone?” he said. 

“Yes—Gudrun could not come.” 

He instantly guessed why. 

And they were both seated in silence, in the terrible tension 
of the room. She was aware that it was a pleasant room, full 
of light and very restful in its form—aware also of a fuchsia 
tree, with dangling scarlet and purple flowers. | 

“How nice the fuchsias are!” she said, to break the silence. 

“Aren’t they! Did you think I had forgotten what I said?” 

A swoon went over Ursula’s mind. 

“T don’t want you to remember it—if you don’t want to,” 
she struggled to say, through the dark mist that covered her. 

There was silence for some moments. b 

“No,” he said. “It isn’t that. Only—if we are going to 
know each other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we 
are going to make a relationship, even of friendship, there 
must be something final and infallible about it.” 

There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. 
She did not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She 
could not have spoken. 

Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost 
bitterly, giving himself away: 

“T can’t say it is love I have to offer—and it isn’t love I 
want. It is something much more impersonal and harder—and 
rarer.” 

There was a silence, out cf which she said: 

“You mean you don’t love me?” 

She suffered furiously, saying that. 

“Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that 
isn’t true. I don’t know. At any rate, I don’t feel the 
emotion of love for you—no, and I don’t want to. Because it 
gives out in the last issues.” 

“Love gives out in the last issues?” she asked, feeling numb 
to the lips. 


MINO 165 


“Ves, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the 
influence of love. There is a real impersonal me, that is 
beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship. So it is with 
you. But we want to delude ourselves that love is the root. 
It isn’t. It is only the branches. The root is beyond love, a 
naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that does not meet and 
mingle, and never can.” 

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was 
incandescent in its abstract earnestness. 

“And you mean you can’t love?” she asked, in trepidation. 

“Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, 
where there is not love.” 

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. 
But she could not submit. 

“But how do you know—if you have never really loved?” 
she asked. 

“It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, 
which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are 
beyond the scope of vision, some of them.” 

“Then there is no love,” cried Ursula. 

“Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, 
there is no love.” 

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. 
Then she half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellant 
voice: 

“Then let me go home—what am I doing here?” 

“There is the door,” he said. “You are a free agent.” 

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. 
She hung motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again. 

“Tf there is no love, what is there?’’ she cried, almost jeering. 

“Something,” he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, 
with all his might. 

“What?” 

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication 
with her while she was in this state of opposition. 

“There is,” he said, in a voice of pure abstraction, “a final 
me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. 
So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet 


166 WOMEN IN LOVE 


you—not in the emotional, loving plane—but there beyond, 
where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There 
we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange crea- 
tures, I would want to approach you, and you me.—And there 
could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action 
there, because no understanding has been reaped from that 
plane. It is quite inhuman,—so there can be no calling to 
book, in any form whatsoever—because one is outside the pale 
of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can 
only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and 
responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only 
each taking according to the primal desire.” 

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost 
senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward. 

“It is just purely selfish,” she said. 

“If it is pure, yes. But it isn’t selfish at all. Because I 
don’t know what I want of you. I deliver myself over to the 
unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, 
stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the 
pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast 
aff ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is 
perfectly ourselves can take place in us.” 

She pondered along her own line of thought. 

“But it is because you love me, that you want me?” she 
persisted. 

“No it isn’t. It is because I believe in you—if I do believe 
in you.” 

“Aren’t you sure?” she laughed, suddenly hurt. 

He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she 
said. 

“Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn’t be here saying ° 
this,” he replied. “But that is all the proof I have. I don’t 
feel any very strong belief at this particular moment.” 

She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and 
faithlessness. 

“But don’t you think me good-looking?” she persisted, in a 
mocking voice. 

He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking. 


MINO 167 


“T don’t feel that you’re good-looking,” he said. 

“Not even attractive?” she mocked, bitingly. 

He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation. 

“Don’t you see that it’s not a question of visual appreciation 
in the least,” he cried. “I don’t want to see you. I’ve seen 
plenty of women, I’m sick and weary of seeing them. I want a 
woman I don’t see.” 

“Ym sorry I can’t oblige you by being invisible,” she laughed. 

“Yes,” he said, “you are invisible to me, if you don’t force 
me to be visually aware of you. But I don’t want to see you 
or hear you.” 

“What did you ask me to tea for, then?” she mocked. 

“But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to 
himself. 

“I want to find you, where you don’t know your own 
existence, the you that your common self denies utterly. But 
I don’t want your good looks, and I don’t want your womanly 
feelings, and I don’t want your thoughts nor opinions nor your 
ideas—they are all bagatelles to me.” 

“You are very conceited, Monsieur,” she mocked. ‘How 
do you know what my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts 
or my ideas? You don’t even know what I think of you now.” 

“Nor do I care in the slightest.” 

“T think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you 
love me, and you go all this way round to do it.” 

“All right,” he said, looking up with sudden exasperation, 
“Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don’t want any 
more of your meretricious persiflage.” 

“Is it really persiflage?” she mocked, her face really relaxing 
into laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep 
confession of love to her. But he was so absurd in his words, 
also. 

They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and 
elated like a child. His concentration broke, he began to look 
at her simply and naturally. 

“What I want is a strange conjunction with you—” he said 


168 WOMEN IN LOVE 


quietly; ‘“—not meeting and mingling ;—you are quite right: — 
but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings:—as 
the stars balance each other.” 

She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness 
was always rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made 
her feel unfree and uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. 
But why drag in the stars. 

“Isn’t this rather sudden?” she mocked. 

He began to laugh. 

“Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,” 
he said. 

A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped 
down and stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its 
slim back. Then it sat considering for a moment, erect and 
kingly. And then, like a dart, it had shot out of the room, 
through the open window-doors, and into the garden. 

“What’s he after?” said Birkin, rising. 

The young cat trotted lordly down the path, waving his 
tail. He was an ordinary tabby with white paws, a slender 
young gentleman. A crouching, fluffy, brownish-grey cat was 
stealing up the side of the fence. The Mino walked statelily 
up to her, with manly nonchalance. She crouched before him 
and pressed herself on the ground in humility, a fluffy soft 
outcast, looking up at him with wild eyes that were green and 
lovely as great jewels. He looked casually down on her. So 
she crept a few inches further, proceeding on her way to the 
back door, crouching in a wonderful, soft self-obliterating man- 
ner, and moving like a shadow. 

He, going statelily on his slim legs, walked after her, then 
suddenly, for pure excess, he gave her a light cuff with his 
paw on the side of her face. She ran off a few steps, like a 
blown leaf along the ground, then crouched unobtrusively, in 
submissive, wild patience. The Mino pretended to take no 
notice of her. He blinked his eyes superbly at the landscape. 
In a minute she drew herself together and moved softly, a 
fleecy, brown-grey shadow, a few paces forward. She began 
to quicken her pace, in a moment she would be gone like a 
dream, when the young grey lord sprang before her, and gave 


MINO 169 


her a light handsome cuff. She subsided at once, submis- 
sively. 

“She is a wild cat,” said Birkin. “She has come in from 
the woods.” 

The eyes of the stray cat flared round for a moment, like 
great green fires staring at Birkin. Then she had rushed in a 
soft swift rush, half way down the garden. There she paused 
to look round. The Mino turned his face in pure superiority 
to his master, and slowly closed his eyes, standing in statuesque 
young perfection. The wild cat’s round, green, wondering eyes 
were staring all the while like uncanny fires. Then again, like 
a shadow, she slid towards the kitchen. 

In a lovely springing leap, like a wind, the Mino was upon 
her, and had boxed her twice, very definitely, with a white, 
delicate fist. She sank and slid back, unquestioning. He 
walked after her, and cuffed her once or twice, leisurely, with 
sudden little blows of his magic white paws. 

“Now why does he do that?” cried Ursula in indignation. 

“They are on intimate terms,” said Birkin. 

“And is that why he hits her?” | 

“Yes,” laughed Birkin, “I think he wants to make it quite 
obvious to her.” 

“Tsn’t it horrid of him!” she cried; and going out into the 
garden she called to the Mino: 

“Stop it, don’t bully. Stop hitting her.” 

The stray cat vanished like a swift, invisible shadow. ‘The 
Mino glanced at Ursula, then looked from her disdainfully to 
his master. 

“Are you a bully, Mino?” Birkin asked. 

The young slim cat looked at him, and slowly narrowed its 
eyes. Then it glanced away at the landscape, looking into 
the distance as if completely oblivious of the two human beings. 

“Mino,” said Ursula, “I don’t like you. You are a bully 
like all males.” 

“No,” said Birkin, “he is justified. He is not a bully. He 
is only insisting to the poor stray that she shall acknowledge 
him as a sort of fate, her own fate: because you can see she is 


170 WOMEN IN LOVE 


fluffy and promiscuous as the wind. I am with him entirely. 
He wants superfine stability.” 

“Yes, I know!” cried Ursula. “He wants his own way—I 
know what your fine words work down to—-bossiness, I call 
it, bossiness.” 

The young cat again glanced at Birkin in disdain of the 
noisy woman. 

“T quite agree with you, Miciotto,” said Birkin to the cat. 
“Keep your male dignity, and your higher understanding.” 

Again the Mino narrowed his eyes as if he were looking at 
the sun. Then, suddenly affecting to have no connection at 
all with the two people, he went trotting off, with assumed 
spontaneity and gaiety, his tail erect, his white feet blithe. 

“Now he will find the belle sauvage once more, and enter- 
tain her with his superior wisdom,” laughed Birkin. 

Ursula looked at the man who stood in the garden with his 
hair blowing and his eyes smiling ironically, and she cried: 

“Oh, it makes me so cross, this assumption of male supe- 
riority!' And it is such a lie! One wouldn’t mind if there 
were any justification for it.” 

“The wild cat,” said Birkin, “doesn’t mind. She perceives 
that it is justified.” 

“Does she!” cried Ursula. “And tell it to the Horse 
Marines.” 

“To them also.” 

“Tt is just like Gerald Crich with his horse—a lust for 
bullying—a real Wille zur Macht—-so base, so petty.” 

“T agree that the Wille zur Macht is a base and petty thing. 
But with the Mino, it is the desire to bring this female cat 
into a pure stable equilibrium, a transcendent and abiding 
rapport with the single male. Whereas without him, as you 
see, she is a mere stray, a fluffy sporadic bit of chaos. It is a 
volonté de pouvoir, if you like, a will to ability, taking pouvoir 
as a verb.” 

“Ah—! Sophistries! It’s the old Adam.” 

“Oh, yes. Adam kept Eve in the indestructible paradise, 
when he kept her single with himself, like a star in its orbit.” 

‘“Yes—yes—” cried Ursula, pointing her finger at him, 


MINO 171 


“There you are—a star in its orbit! A satellite—a satellite 
of Mars—that’s what she is to be! There—there—you’ve 
given yourself away! You want a satellite, Mars and his 
satellite! You’ve said it—you’ve said it—you’ve dished your- 
self!” 

He stood smiling in frustration and amusement and irri- 
tation and admiration and love. She was so quick, and so 
lambent, like discernible fire, and so vindictive, and so rich 
in her dangerous flamy sensitiveness. 

“T’ve not said it at all,” he replied, “if you will give me a 
chance to speak.” 

“No, no!” she cried. “I won’t let you speak. You’ve said 
it, a satellite, you’re not going to wriggle out of it. You’ve 
said it.” | 

“Youll never believe now that I haven’t said it,” he 
answered. “I neither implied nor indicated nor mentioned a 
satellite, nor intended a satellite, never.” 

“Vou prevaricator!” she cried, in real indignation. 

“Tea is ready, sir,” said the landlady from the doorway. 

They both looked at her, very much as the cats had looked 
at them, a little while before. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Daykin.” 

An interrupted silence fell over the two of them, a moment 
of breach. 

“Come and have tea,” he said. 

“Yes, I should love it,” she replied, gathering herself together. 

They sat facing each other across the tea table. 

“I did not say, nor imply, a satellite. I meant two single 
equal stars balanced in conjunction—” 

“You gave yourself away, you gave away your little game 
completely,” she cried, beginning at once to eat. He saw — 
that she would take no further heed of his expostulation, so he 
began to pour the tea. 

“What good things to eat!” she cried. 

“Take your own sugar,” he said. 

He handed her her cup. He had everything so nice, such 
pretty cups and plates, painted with mauve-lustre and green, 
also shapely bowls and glass plates, and old spoons, on a woven 


172 WOMEN IN LOVE 


cloth of pale grey and black and purple. It was very rich and 
fine. But Ursula could see Hermione’s influence. 

“Your things are so lovely!” she said, almost angrily. 

“7 like them. It gives me real pleasure to use things that 
are attractive in themselves—pleasant things. And Mrs. Day- 
kin is good. She thinks everything is wonderful, for my 
sake.” 

“Really,” said Ursula, “landladies are better -than wives, 
nowadays. They certainly care a great deal more. It is much 
more beautiful and complete here now, than if you were 
married.” 

“But think of the emptiness within,” he laughed. 

“No,” she said. “I am jealous that men have such perfect 
landladies and such beautiful lodgings. There is nothing left 
them to desire.” | 

“In the house-keeping way, we'll hope not. It is disgusting, 
people marrying for a home.” 

“Still,” said Ursula, “a man has very little need for a woman 
now, has he?” 

“In outer things, maybe—except to share his bed and bear 
his children. But essentially, there is just the same need as 
there ever was. Only nobody takes the trouble to be essential.” 

“How essential?” she said. 

“TI do think,” he said, “that the world is only held together 
by the mystic conjunction, the ultimate unison between people 
—a bond. And the immediate bond is between man and 
woman.” 

“But it’s such old hat,” said Ursula. “Why should love 
be a bond? No, I’m not having any.” 

“If you are walking westward,” he said, “you forfeit the 
northern and eastward and southern direction—If you admit 
a unison, you forfeit all the possibilities of chaos.” 

“But love is freedom,” she declared. 

“Don’t cant to me,” he replied. ‘Love is a direction which 
excludes all other directions. It’s a freedom together, if you 
like.” 

“No,” she said, “love includes everything.” 

“Sentimental cant,” he replied. ‘You want the state of 


MINO 173 


chaos, that’s all. It is ultimate nihilism, this freedom-in-love 
business, this freedom which is love and love which is freedom. 
As a matter of fact, if you enter into a pure unison, it is 
irrevocable, and it is never pure till it is irrevocable. And 
when it is irrevocable, it is one way, like the path of a star.” 

“Ha!” she cried bitterly. “It is the old dead morality.” 

“No,” he said, “it is the law of creation. One is committed. 
One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—for 
ever. But it is not selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in 
mystic balance and integrity—like a star balanced with 
another star.” 

“T don’t trust you when you drag in the stars,” she said. 
“If you were quite true, it wouldn’t be necessary to be so 
far-fetched.” 

“Don’t trust me then,” he said, angry. “It is enough that 
I trust myself.” 

“And that is where you make another mistake,” she replied. 
“You don’t trust yourself. You don’t fully believe yourself 
what you are saying. You don’t really want this conjunction, 
otherwise you wouldn’t talk so much about it, you’d get it.” 

He was suspended for a moment, arrested. 

“How?” he said. 

“By just loving,” she retorted in defiance. 

He was still a moment, in anger. Then he said: 

“T tell you, I don’t believe in love like that. I tell you, 
you want love to administer to your egoism, to subserve you. 
Love is a process of subservience with you—and with every- 
body. I hate it.” 

“No,” she cried, pressing back her head like a cobra, her 
eyes flashing. “It is a process of pride—I want to be proud—” 

“Proud and subservient, proud and subservient, I know 
you,” he retorted dryly. “Proud and subservient, then sub- 
servient to the proud—I know you and your love. It is a 
tick-tack, tick-tack, a dance of opposites.” 

“Are you sure?” she mocked wickedly, “what my love is?” 

“Yes, I am!” he retorted. 

“So cocksure!” she said. ‘How can anybody ever be right, 
who is so cocksure? It shows you are wrong.” 


174 WOMEN IN LOVE 


He was silent in chagrin and weariness. 

- They had talked and struggled till they were both wearied 
out. . 

“Tell me about yourself and your people,” he said. . 

And she told him about the Brangwens, and about her 
mother, and about Skrebensky, her first love, and about her 
later experiences. He sat very still, watching her as she 
talked. And he seemed to listen with reverence. Her face 
was beautiful and full of baffled light as she told him all the 
things that had hurt her or perplexed her so deeply. He 
seemed to warm and comfort his soul at the beautiful light 
of her nature. 

“Tf she really could pledge herself,” he thought to himself, 
with passionate insistence but hardly any hope. Yet a curious 
little irresponsible laughter appeared in his heart. 

“We have all suffered so much,” he mocked, ironically. 

She looked up at him, and a flash of wild gaiety went: over 
her face, a strange flash of yellow light coming from her eyes. 

“Haven’t we!” she cried, in a high, reckless cry. “It is 
almost absurd, isn’t it?” 

“Quite absurd,” he said. “Suffering bores me, any more.” 

“So it does me.” 

He was almost afraid of the mocking recklessness of her 
splendid face. Here was one who would go to the whole 
lengths of heaven or hell, whichever she had to go. And he 
mistrusted her, he was afraid of a woman capable of such 
abandon, such dangerous thoroughness of destructivity. Yet 
he chuckled within himself, also. | 

She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, 
looking down at him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very 
tender, but with a curious devilish look lurking underneath. 

“Say you love me, say ‘my love’ to me,” she pleaded. 

He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered 
with sardonic comprehension. 

“I love you right enough,” he said, grimly. “But I want it | 
to be something else.” 

“But why? But why?” she insisted, bending her won- 
derful luminous face to him. ‘Why isn’t it enough?” 


MINO 175 


“Because we can go one better,” he said, putting his arms 
round her. 

“No, we can’t,” she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of 
yielding. ‘We can only love each other. Say ‘my love’ to me, 
say it, say it.” 

She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and 
kissed her subtly, murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and 
irony, and submission: 
~ “Yes,—my love, yes——my love. Let love be enough then. 
I love you then—I love you. I’m bored by the rest.” 

“Yes,” she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him. 


CHAPTER XIV 
WATER-PARTY 


Every year Mr. Crich gave a more or less public water- 
party on the lake. There was a little pleasure-launch on Willey 
Water and several rowing boats, and guests could take tea 
either in the marquee that was set up in the grounds of the 
house, or they could picnic in the shade of the great walnut- 
tree at the boat-house by the lake. This year the staff of the 
Grammar-School was invited, along with the chief officials of 
the firm. Gerald and the younger Criches did not care for 
this party, but it had become customary now, and it pleased 
the father, as being the only occasion when he could gather 
some people of the district together in festivity with him. 
For he loved to give pleasures to his dependents and to those 
poorer than himself. But his children preferred the company 
of their own equals in wealth. They hated their inferiors’ 
humility or gratitude or awkwardness. 

Nevertheless, they were willing to attend at this festival, 
as they had done almost since they were children, the more 
so, as they all felt a little guilty now, and unwilling to thwart 
their father any more, since he was so ill in health. There- 
fore, quite cheerfully Laura prepared to take her mother’s 
place as hostess, and Gerald assumed responsibility for the 
amusements on the water. 

Birkin had written to Ursula saying he expected to see her 
at the party, and Gudrun, although she scorned the patronage 
of the Criches, would nevertheless accompany her mother and 
father if the weather were fine. 

The day came blue and full of sunshine, with little wafts of 
wind. The sisters both wore dresses of white crépe, and hats 
of soft grass. But Gudrun had a sash of brilliant black and 
pink and yellow colour wound broadly round her waist, and 

176 


WATER-PARTY 177 


she had pink silk stockings, and black and pink and yellow 
decoration on the brim of her hat, weighing it down a little. 
She carried also a yellow silk coat over her arm, so that she 
looked remarkable, like a painting from the Salon. Her ap- 
pearance was a sore trial to her father, who said angrily: 

“Don’t you think you might as well get yourself up for a 
Christmas cracker, an’ ha’ done with it?” 

But Gudrun looked handsome and brilliant, and she wore 
her clothes in pure defiance. When people stared at her, 
and giggled after her, she made a point of saying loudly, to 
Ursula: 

“Regarde, regarde ces gens-la! Ne sont-ills pas des hiboux 
incroyables?” And with the words of French in her mouth, 
she would look over her shoulder at the giggling party. 

“No, really, it’s impossible!” Ursula would reply distinctly. 
And so the two girls took it out of their universal enemy. But 
their father became more and more enraged. 

Ursula was all snowy white, save that her hat was pink, 
and entirely without trimming, and her shoes were dark red, 
and she carried an orange-coloured coat. And in this guise 
they were walking all the way to Shortlands, their father and 
mother going in front. 

They were laughing at their mother, who, dressed in a sum- 
mer material of black and purple stripes, and wearing a hat 
of purple straw, was setting forth with much more of the 
shyness and trepidation of a young girl than her daughters 
ever felt, walking demurely beside her husband, who, as usual, 
looked rather crumpled in his best suit, as if he were the father 
of a young family and had been holding the baby whilst his 
wife got dressed. 

“Look at the young couple in front,” said Gudrun calmly. 
Ursula looked at her mother and father, and was suddenly 
seized with uncontrollable laughter. The two girls stood in 
_ the road.and laughed till the tears ran down their faces, as 
they caught sight again of the shy, unworldly couple of their 
parents going on ahead. 

“We are roaring at you, mother,” called Ursula, ey 
following after her parents. 


178 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Mrs. Brangwen turned round with a slightly puzzled, ex- 
asperated look. “Oh indeed!” she said. ‘What is there so 
very funny about me, I should like to know?” 

She could not understand that there could be anything 
amiss with her appearance. She had a perfect calm suffi- 
ciency, an easy indifference to any criticism whatsoever, as 
if she were beyond it. Her clothes were always rather odd, 
and as a rule slip-shod, yet she wore them with a perfect ease 
and satisfaction. Whatever she had on, so long as she was 
barely tidy, she was right, beyond remark; such an aristocrat 
she was by instinct. 

“You look so stately, like a country Baroness,”’ said Ursula, 
laughing with a little tenderness at her mother’s naive puz- 
zled air. 

“Just like a country Baroness!” chimed in Grudun. Now 
the mother’s natural hauteur became self-conscious, and the 
girls shrieked again. 

“Go home, you pair of idiots, great giggling idiots!” cried 
the father inflamed with irritation. 

“Mm-m-er!” booed Ursula, pulling a face at his crossness. 

The yellow lights danced in his eyes, he leaned forward in 
real rage. 

“Tyon’t be so silly as to take any notice of the great gabies,” 
said Mrs. Brangwen, turning on her way. 

“T’ll see if I’m going to be followed by a pair of giggling 
yelling jackanapes—” he cried vengefully. 

The girls stood still, laughing helplessly at his fury, upon 
the path beside the edu. 

“Why you're as silly as they are, to take any notice,” said 
Mrs. Brangwen also becoming angry now he was really en- 
raged. 

“There are some people coming, father,” cried Ursula, with 
mocking warning. He glanced round quickly, and went on 
to join his wife, walking stiff with rage. And the girls fol- 
lowed, weak with laughter. 

When the people had passed by, Brangwen cried in a loud, 
stupid voice: 


WATER-PARTY 179 


“Tm going back home if there’s any more of this. I’m 
damned if I’m going to be made a fool of in this fashion, in 
the public road.” 

He was really out of temper. At the sound of his blind, 
vindictive voice, the laughter suddenly left the girls, and their 
hearts contracted with contempt. They hated his words “in 
the public road.” What did they care for the public road? 
But Gudrun was conciliatory. 

“But we weren’t laughing to Aurt you,” she cried, with 
an uncouth gentleness which made her parents uncomfortable. 
“We were laughing because we’re fond of you.” 

“We'll walk on in front, if they are so touchy,” said Ursula, 
angry. And in this wise they arrived at Willey Water. The 
lake was blue and fair, the meadows sloped down in sunshine 
on one side, the thick dark woods dropped steeply on the other. 
The little pleasure-launch was fussing out from the shore, 
twanging its music, crowded with people, flapping its paddles. 
Near the boat-house was a throng of gaily-dressed persons, 
small in the distance. And on the high-road, some of the 
common people were standing along the hedge, looking at the 
festivity beyond, enviously, like souls not admitted to paradise. 

“My eye!” said Gudrun, sotto voce, looking at the motley 
of guests, “there’s a pretty crowd if you like! Imagine your- . 
self in the midst of that, my dear.” 

Gudrun’s apprehensive horror of people in the mass un- 
nerved Ursula. “It looks rather awful,” she said anxiously. 

“And imagine what they’ll be like—imagine!”’ said Gudrun, 
still in that unnerving, subdued voice. Yet she advanced de- 
terminedly. 

“T suppose we can get away from them,” said Ursula 
anxiously. 

“We're in a pretty fix if we can’t,” said Gudrun. Her ex- 
treme ironic loathing and apprehension was very trying to 
Ursula. 

“We needn’t stay,” she said. 

“T certainly shan’t stay five minutes among that little lot,” 
said Gudrun. They advanced nearer, till they saw policemen 
at the gates. 


180 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Policemen to keep you in, too!” said Gudrun. “My word, 
this is a beautiful affair.” 

“We'd better look after father and mother,” said Ursula 
anxiously. 

“Mother’s perfectly capable of getting through this little 
celebration,” said Gudrun with some contempt. 

But Ursula knew that her father felt uncouth and angry and 
unhappy, so she was far from her ease. They waited outside 
the gate till their parents came up. The tall, thin man in his 
crumpled clothes, was unnerved and irritable as a boy, find- 
ing himself on the brink of this social function. He did not 
feel a gentleman, he did not feel anything except pure ex- 
asperation. 

Ursula took her place at his side, they gave their tickets 
to the policeman, and passed in on to the grass, four abreast; 
the tall, hot, ruddy-dark man with his narrow boyish brow 
drawn with irritation, the fresh-faced, easy woman, perfectly 
collected though her hair was slipping on one side, then 
Gudrun, her eyes round and dark and staring, her full soft 
face impassive, almost sulky, so that she seemed to be backing 
away in antagonism even whilst she was advancing; and then 
Ursula, with the odd, brilliant, dazzled look on her face, that 
always came when she was in some false situation. 

Birkin was the good angel. He came smiling to them with 
his affected social grace, that somehow was never quite right. 
But he took off his hat and smiled at them with a real smile in 
his eyes, so that Brangwen cried out heartily in relief: 

“How do you do? You're better, are you?” 

“Yes, I’m better. How do you do, Mrs. Brangwen? I 
know Gudrun and Ursula very well.” 

His eyes smiled full of natural warmth. He had a soft, 
flattering manner with women, particularly with women who 
were not young. 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Brangwen, cool but yet gratified. “I have 
heard them speak of you often enough.” 

He laughed. Gudrun looked aside, feeling she was being be- 
littled. People were standing about in groups, some women 
were sitting in the shade of the walnut tree, with cups of tea 


WATER-PARTY 181 


in their hands, a waiter in evening dress was hurrying round, 
some girls were simpering with parasols, some young men, 
who had just come in from rowing, were sitting cross-legged 
on the grass, coatless, their shirt-sleeves rolled up in manly 
fashion, their hands resting on their white flannel trousers, 
their gaudy ties floating about, as they laughed and tried to 
be witty with the young damsels. 

“Why,” thought Gudrun churlishly, “don’t they have the 
manners to put their coats on, and not to assume such in- 
timacy in their appearance.” 

She abhorred the ordinary young man, with his hair plas- 
tered back, and his easy-going chumminess. 

Hermione Roddice came up, in a handsome gown of white 
lace, trailing an enormous silk shawl blotched with great em- 
broidered flowers, and balancing an enormous plain hat on 
her head. She looked striking, astonishing, almost macabre, 
so tall, with the fringe of her great cream-coloured vividly- 
blotched shawl trailing on the ground after her, her thick 
hair coming low over her eyes, her face strange and long and 
pale, and the blotches of brilliant colour drawn round her. 

“Doesen’t she look weird!” Gudrun heard some girls titter 
behind her. And she could have killed them. 

“How do you do!” sang Hermione, coming up very kindly, 
and glancing slowly over Gudrun’s father and mother. It 
was a trying moment, exasperating for Gudrun. Hermione 
was really so strongly entrenched in her class superiority, she 
could come up and know people out of simple curiosity, as 
if they were creatures on exhibition. Gudrun would do the 
same herself. But she resented being in the position when 
somebody might do it to her. 

Hermione, very remarkable, and distinguishing the Brang- 
wens very much, led them along to where Laura Crich stood 
receiving the guests. 

“This is Mrs. Brangwen,” sang Hermione, and Laura, who 
wore a stiff embroidered linen dress, shook hands and said 
she was glad to see her. Then Gerald came up, dressed in 
white, with a black and brown blazer, and looking handsome. 
He too was introduced to the Brangwen parents, and immedi- 


182 WOMEN IN LOVE 


ately he spoke to Mrs. Brangwen as if she were a lady, and 
to Brangwen as if he were not a gentleman. Gerald was so 
obvious in his demeanour. He had to shake hands with his 
left hand, because he had hurt his right, and carried it, band- 
aged up, in the pocket of his jacket. Gudrun was very thank- 
ful that none of her party asked him what was the matter with 
the hand. 

The steam launch was fussing in, all its music jingling, 
people calling excitedly from on board. Gerald went to see 
to the debarkation, Birkin was getting tea for Mrs. Brangwen, 
Brangwen had joined a Grammar-School group, Hermione was 
sitting down by their mother, the girls went to the landing- 
stage to watch the launch come in. 

She hooted and tooted gaily, then her paddles were silent, 
the ropes were thrown ashore, she drifted in with a little 
bump. Immediately the passengers crowded excitedly to come 
ashore. 

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” shouted Gerald in sharp 
command. 

They must wait till the boat was tight on the ropes, till the 
small gangway was put out. Then they streamed ashore, 
clamouring as if they had come from America. 

“Oh, it’s so nice!” the young girls were crying. “It’s quite 
lovely.” | 

The waiters from on board ran out to the boat-house with 
baskets, the captain lounged on the little bridge. Seeing all 
safe, Gerald came to Gudrun and Ursula. 

“You wouldn’t care to go on board for the next trip, and 
have tea there?” he asked. 

“No, thanks,” said Gudrun coldly. 

“You don’t care for the water?” 

“For the water? Yes, I like it very much.” 

He looked at her, his eyes searching. 

“You don’t care for going on a launch, then?” 

She was slow in answering, and then she spoke slowly. 

“No,” she said. “I can’t say that I do.” Her colour was 
high, she seemed angry about something. 

“Un peu trop de monde,” said Ursula, explaining. 


WATER-PARTY 183 


“Eh? Trop de monde!” he laughed shortly. ‘Yes, there’s 
a fair number of ’em.” 

Gudrun turned on him brilliantly. 

“Have you ever been from Westminster Bridge to Rich- 
mond on one of the Thames steamers?” she cried. 

“No,” he said, “I can’t say I have.” 

“Well, it’s one of the most vile experiences I’ve ever had.” 
She spoke rapidly and excitedly, the colour high in her cheeks. 
“There was absolutely nowhere to sit down, nowhere, a man 
just above sang ‘Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep’ the whole 
way; he was blind and he had a small organ, one of those 
portable organs, and he expected money; so you can imagine 
what that was like; there came a constant smell of luncheon 
from below, and puffs of hot oily machinery; the journey took 
hours and hours and hours; and for miles, literally for miles, 
dreadful boys ran with us on the shore, in that awful Thames 
mud, going in up to the waist—they had their trousers turned 
back, and down they went up to their hips in that indescribable 
Thames mud, their faces always turned to us, and screaming, 
exactly like carrion creatures, screaming ‘ Ere y’are sir, ’ere 
y’are sir, ere ye’are sir,’ exactly like some foul carrion objects, 
perfectly obscene; and paterfamilias on board, laughing when 
the boys went right down in that awful mud, occasionally 
throwing them a ha’penny. And if you’d seen the intent look 
on the faces of these boys, and the way they darted in the 
filth when a coin was flung—really, no vulture or jackal could 
dream of approaching them, for foulness. I mever would go 
on a pleasure boat again—never.” 

Gerald watched her all the time she spoke, his eyes glitter- 
ing with faint rousedness. It was not so much what she said; 
it was she herself who roused him, roused him with a small, 
vivid pricking. 

“Of course,” he said, ‘‘every civilised body is bound to have 
its vermin.” 

“Why?” cried Ursula. “J don’t have vermin.” 

“And it’s not that—it’s the quality of the whole thing— 
paterfamilias laughing and thinking it sport, and throwing the 


184 WOMEN IN LOVE 


ha’pennies, and materfamilias spreading her fat little knees 
and eating, continually eating—” replied Gudrun. 

“Yes,” said Ursula. “It isn’t the boys so much who are 
vermin; it’s the people themselves, the whole body politic, as 
you call it.” 

Gerald laughed. 

“Never mind,” he said. “You shan’t go on the launch.” 

Gudrun flushed quickly at his rebuke. 

There were a few moments of silence. Gerald, like a sen- 
tinel, was watching the people who were going on to the boat. 
He was very good-looking and self-contained, but his air of 
soldierly alertness was rather irritating. 

“Will you have tea here then, or go across to the house, 
where there’s a tent on the lawn?” he asked. 

“Can’t we have a rowing boat, and get out?” asked Ursula, 
who was always rushing in too fast. 

“To get out?” smiled Gerald. 

“You see,” cried Gudrun, flushing at Ursula’s outspoken 
rudeness, ‘“‘we don’t know the people, we are almost complete 
strangers here.” 

“Oh, I can soon set you up with a few acquaintances,” he 
said easily. 

Gudrun looked at him, to see if it were ill-meant. Then she 
smiled at him. 

“Ah,” she said, “you know what we mean, Can’t we go 
up there, and explore that coast?” She pointed to a grove on 
the hillock of the meadow-side, near the shore, half-way down 
the lake. “That looks perfectly lovely. We might even bathe. 
Isn’t it beautiful in this light! Really, it’s like one of the 
reaches of the Nile—as one imagines the Nile.” 

Gerald smiled at her factitious enthusiasm for the distant 
spot. 

“You're sure it’s far enough off?” he asked ironically, add- 
ing at once: “Yes, you might go there, if we could get a boat. 
They seem to be all out.” 

He looked round the lake and counted the rowing boats on 
its surface. 

“How lovely it would be!” cried Ursula wistfully. 


WATER-PARTY 185 


“And don’t you want tea?” he said. 

“Oh,” said Gudrun, “we could just drink a cup, and be off.” 

He looked from one to the other, smiling. He was some- 
what offended—yet sporting. 

“Can you manage a boat pretty well?” he asked. 

“Ves,” replied Gudrun, coldly, “pretty well.” . 

“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. ‘We can both of us row like 
water-spiders.” 

“You can? There’s a light little canoe of mine, that I 
didn’t take out for fear somebody should drown themselves. 
Do you think you’d be safe in that?” 

“Oh perfectly,” said Gudrun. 

“What an angel!” cried Ursula. 

“Don’t, for my sake, have an accident—because I’m re- 
sponsible for the water.” 

“Sure,” pledged Gudrun. 

“Besides, we can both swim quite well,” said Ursula. 

“Well—then I'll get them to put you up a tea-basket, and 
you can picnic all to yourselves,—that’s the idea, isn’t it?” 

“How fearfully good! How frightfully nice if you could!” 
cried Gudrun warmly, her colour flushing up again. It made 
the blood stir in his veins, the subtle way she turned to him 
and infused her gratitude into his body. | 

“Where’s Birkin?” he said, his eyes twinkling. ‘He might 
help me to get it down.” 

“But what about your hand? Isn’t it hurt?” asked Gud- 
run, rather muted, as if avoiding the intimacy. This was the 
first time the hurt had been mentioned. The curious way she 
skirted round the subject sent a new, subtle caress through 
his veins. He took his hand out of his pocket. It was band- 
aged. He looked at it, then put it in his pocket again. Gudrun 
quivered at the sight of the wrapped up paw. 

“Oh, I can manage with one hand. The canoe is as light 
as a feather,” he said. ‘“There’s Rupert!—Rupert!” 

Birkin turned from his social duties and came towards them. 

“What have you done to it?” asked Ursula, who had been 
aching to put the question for the last half hour. 


186 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“To my hand?” said Gerald. “I trapped it in some ma- 
chinery.” } 

“Ugh!” said Ursula. ‘And did it hurt much?” 

“Yes,” he said. “It did at the time. It’s getting better 
now. It crushed the fingers.” : 

“Oh,” cried Ursula, as if in pain, “I hate people who hurt 
themselves. I can feel it.” And she shook her hand. 

“What do you want?” said Birkin. 

The two men carried down the slim brown boat, and set it 
on the water. 

“You're quite sure you'll be safe in it?” Gerald asked. 

“Quite sure,” said Gudrun. “I wouldn’t be so mean as to 
take it, if there was the slightest doubt. But I’ve had a canoe 
at Arundel, and I assure you I’m perfectly safe.” 

So saying, having given her word like a man, she and 
Ursula entered the frail craft, and pushed gently off. The 
two men stood watching thém: Gudrun was paddling. She 
knew the men were watching her, and it made her slow and 
rather clumsy. The colour flew in her face like a flag. 

“Thanks awfully,” she called back to him, from the water, 
as the boat slid away. “It’s lovely—tlike sitting in a leaf.” 

He laughed at the fancy. Her voice was shrill and strange, 
calling from the distance. He watched her as she paddled 
away. There was something childlike about her, trustful and 
deferential, like a child. He watched her all the while, as she 
rowed. And to Gudrun it was a real delight, in make-belief, 
to be the childlike, clinging woman to the man who stood 
there on the quay, so goodlooking and efficient in his white 
clothes, and moreover the most important man she knew at the 
moment. She did not take any notice of the wavering, indis- 
tinct, lambent Birkin, who stood at his side. One figure at a 
time occupied the field of her attention. 

The boat rustled lightly along the water. They passed the 
bathers whose striped tents stood between the willows of the 
meadow’s edge, and drew along the open shore, past the 
meadows that sloped golden in the light of the already late 
afternoon. Other boats were stealing under the wooded shore 
opposite, they could hear people’s laughter and voices. But 


WATER-PARTY 187 


Gudrun rowed on towards the clump of trees that balanced 
perfect in the distance, in the golden light. 

The sisters found a little place where a tiny stream flowed 
into the lake, with reeds and flowery marsh of pink willox 
herb, and a gravelly bank to the side. Here they ran deli- 
cately ashore, with their frail boat, the two girls took off their 
shoes and stockings and went through the water’s edge to the 
grass. The tiny ripples of the lake were warm and clear, they 
lifted their boat on to the bank, and looked round with joy. 
They were quite alone in a forsaken little stream-mouth, and 
on the knoll just behind was the clump of trees. 

“We will bathe just for a moment,” said Ursula, “and then 
we'll have tea.” 

They looked round. Nobody could notice them, or could 
come up in time to see them. In less than a minute Ursula 
had thrown off her clothes and had slipped naked into the 
water, and was swimming out. Quickly, Gudrun joined her. 
They swam silently and blissfully for a few minutes, circling 
round their little stream-mouth. Then they slipped ashore and 
ran into the grove again, like nymphs. 

“How lovely it is to be free,” said Ursula, running swiftly 
here and there between the tree trunks, quite naked, her hair 
blowing loose. The grove was of beech-trees, big and splendid, 
a steel-grey scaffolding of trunks and boughs, with level sprays 
of strong green here and there, whilst through the northern 
side the distance glimmered open as through a window. 

When they had run and danced themselves dry, the girls 
quickly dressed and sat down to the fragrant tea. They sat on 
the northern side of the grove, in the yellow sunshine facing 
the slope of the grassy hill, alone in a little wild world of 
their own. The tea was hot and aromatic, there were delicious 
little sandwiches of cucumber and of caviare, and winy cakes. 

“Are you happy, Prune?” cried Ursula in delight, looking 
at her sister. 

“Ursula, I’m perfectly happy,” replied Gudrun gravely, 
looking at the westering sun. 

“So am J.” 

When they were thoethor. doing the things they enjoyed, 


188 WOMEN IN LOVE 


the two sisters were quite complete in a perfect world of their 
own. And this was one of the perfect moments of freedom 
and delight, such as children alone know, when all seems a 
perfect and blissful adventure. 

When they had finished tea, the two girls sat on, silent and 
serene. Then Ursula, who had a beautiful strong voice, began 
to sing to herself, softly: ‘“Annchen von Tharau.” Gudrun 
listened, as she sat beneath the trees, and the yearning came 
into her heart. Ursula seemed so peaceful and sufficient unto 
herself, sitting there unconsciously crooning her song, strong 
and unquestioned at the centre of her own universe. And 
Gudrun felt herself outside. Always this desolating, agonised 
feeling, that she was outside of life, an onlooker, whilst Ursula 
was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of her 
own negation, and made her, that she must always demand 
the other to be aware of her, to be in connection with her. 

“Do you mind if I do Dalcroze to that tune, Hurtler?” she 
asked in a curious muted tone, scarce moving her lips. 

“What did you say?” asked Ursula, looking up in peaceful 
surprise. 

“Will you sing while I do Dalcroze?” said Gudrun, suffer- 
ing at having to repeat herself. 

Ursula thought a moment, gathering her straying wits to- 
gether. 

“While you do—?” she asked vaguely. 

“Dalcroze movements,” said Gudrun, suffering tortures of 
self-consciousness, even because of her sister. 

“Oh, Dalcroze! I couldn’t catch the name. Do—I should 
love to see you,” cried Ursula, with childish Sere bright- 
ness. “What shall I sing?” 

“Sing anything you like, and I'll take the rhythm from it.” 

But Ursula could not for her life think of anything to sing. 
However, she suddenly began, in a laughing, teasing voice: 

“My love—is a high-born lady—” 

Gudrun, looking as if some invisible chain weighed on her 
hands and feet, began slowly to dance in the eurythmic man- 
ner, pulsing and fluttering rhythmically with her feet, making 
slower, regular gestures with her hands and arms, now spread- 


WATER-PARTY 189 


ing her arms wide, now raising them above her head, now 
flinging them softly apart, and lifting her face, her feet all the 
time beating and running to the measure of the song, as if it 
were some strange incantation, her white, rapt form drifting 
here and there in a strange impulsive rhapsody, seeming to be 
lifted on a breeze of incantation, shuddering with strange little 
runs. Ursula sat on the grass, her mouth open in her singing, 
her eyes laughing as if she thought it was a great joke, but a 
yellow light flashing up in them, as she caught some of the 
unconscious ritualistic suggestion of the complex shuddering 
and waving and drifting of her sister’s white form, that was 
clutched in pure, mindless, tossing rhythm, and a will set 
powerful in a kind of hypnotic influence. 

“My love is a high-born lady—She is-s-s—rather dark than 
shady—” rang out Ursula’s laughing, satiric song, and quicker, 
fiercer went Gudrun in the dance, stamping as if she were try- 
ing to throw off some bond, flinging her hands suddenly and 
stamping again, then rushing with face uplifted and throat full 
and beautiful, and eyes half closed, sightless. The sun was 
low and yellow, sinking down, and in the sky floated a thin, in- 
effectual moon. 

Ursula was quite absorbed in her song, when suddenly 
Gudrun stopped and said mildly, ironically: 

“Ursula!” 

“Yes?” said Ursula, opening her eyes out of the trance. 

Gudrun was standing still and pointing, a mocking smile on 
her face, towards the side. 

“Ugh!” cried Ursula in sudden panic, starting to her feet. 

“They’re quite all right,” rang out Gudrun’s sardonic voice. 

On the left stood a little cluster of Highland cattle, vividly 
coloured and fleecy in the evening light, their horns branching 
into the sky, pushing forward their muzzles inquisitively, to 
know what it was all about. Their eyes glittered through their 
tangle of hair, their naked nostrils were full of shadow. 

“Won't they do anything?” cried Ursula in fear. 

Gudrun, who was usually frightened of cattle, now shook 
her head in a queer, half-doubtful, half-sardonic motion, a faint 
smile round her mouth. 


90 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Don’t they look charming, Ursula?” cried Gudrun, ir a 
high, strident voice, something like the scream of a sea-gull. 

“Charming,” cried Ursula in trepidation. “But won’t they 
do anything to us?” 

Again Gudrun looked back at her sister with an enigmatic 
smile, and shook her head. 

“T’m sure they won’t,”’ she said, as if she had to convince 
herself also, and yet, as if she were confident of some secret 
power in herself, and had to put it to the test. “Sit down and 
sing again,” she called in her high, strident voice. 

“I’m frightened,” cried Ursula, in a pathetic voice, watch- 
ing the group of sturdy short cattle, that stood with their 
knees planted, and watched with their dark, wicked eyes, 
through the matted fringe of their hair. Nevertheless, she sank 
down again, in her former posture. 

“They are quite safe,’ came Gudrun’s high call. ‘Sing 
something, you’ve only to sing something.” | 

It was evident she had a strange passion to dance before the 
sturdy, handsome cattle. 

Ursula began to sing, in a false quavering voice: 

“It’s a long, long way to Tipperary—” 

She sounded purely anxious. Nevertheless, Gudrun, with 
her arms outspread and her face uplifted, went in a strange 
palpitating dance towards the cattle, lifting her body towards 
them as if in a spell, her feet pulsing as if in some little frenzy 
of unconscious sensation, her arms, her wrists, her hands 
stretching and heaving and falling and reaching and reaching 
and falling, her breasts lifted and shaken towards the cattle, 
her throat exposed as in some voluptuous ecstasy towards 
them, whilst she drifted imperceptibly nearer, an uncanny 
white figure, towards them, carried away in its own rapt 
trance, ebbing in strange fluctuations upon the cattle, that 
waited, and ducked their heads a little in sudden contraction 
from her, watching all the time as if hypnotised, their bare 
horns branching in the clear light, as the white figure of the 
woman ebbed upon them, in the slow, hypnotising convulsion 
of the dance. She could feel them just in front of her, it was 
as if she had the electric pulse from their breasts running into 


WATER-PARTY 19% 


her hands. Soon she would touch them, actually touch them. 
A terrible shiver of fear and pleasure went through her. And 
all the while, Ursula, spell-bound, kept up her high-pitched 
thin, irrelevant song, which pierced the fading evening like an 
incantation. 

Gudrun could hear the cattle breathing heavily with help- 
less fear and fascination. Oh, they were brave little beasts, 
these wild Scotch bullocks, wild and fleecy. Suddenly one of 
them snorted, ducked its head, and backed. 

“Fue! Hi-eee!”? came a sudden loud shout from the edge 
of the grove. The cattle broke and fell back quite spontane- 
ously, went running up the hill, their fleece waving like fire 
to their motion. Gudrun stood suspended out on the grass, 
Ursula rose to her feet. 

It was Gerald and Birkin come to find them, and Gerald 
had cried out to frighten off the cattle. : 

“What do you think you’re doing?” he now called, in a 
high, wondering vexed tone. 

“Why have you come?” came back Gudrun’s strident cry 
of anger. 2 

“What do you think you were doing?” Gerald repeated, 
automatically. | 

“We were doing eurythmics,” laughed Ursula, in a shaken 
voice. » 

Gudrun stood aloof looking at them with large dark eyes of 
resentment, suspended for a few moments. Then she walked 
away up the hill, after the cattle, which had gathered in a 
little, spell-bound cluster higher up. 

“Where are you going?” Gerald called after her. And he 
followed her up the hill-side. The sun had gone behind the 
hill, and shadows were clinging to the earth, the sky above 
was full of travelling light. 

“A poor song for a dance,” said Birkin to Ursula, standing 
before her with a sardonic, flickering laugh on his face. And 
in another second, he was singing softly to himself, and danc- 
ing a grotesque step-dance in front of her, his limbs and body 
shaking loose, his face flickering palely, a constant thing, whilst 


192° WOMEN IN LOVE 


his feet beat a rapid mocking tattoo, and his body seemed to 
hang all loose and quaking in between, like a shadow. 

“T think we’ve all gone mad,” she said, laughing rather 
frightened. | 

“Pity we aren’t madder,” he answered, as he kept up the 
incessant shaking dance. Then suddenly he leaned up to 
her and kissed her fingers lightly, putting his face to hers 
and looking into her eyes with a pale grin. She-stepped back, 
affronted. 

“Offended—?” he asked ironically, suddenly going quite 
still and reserved again. “I thought you liked the light 
fantastic.” 

“Not like that,” she said, confused and bewildered, almost 
affronted. Yet somewhere inside her she was fascinated by 
the sight of his loose, vibrating body, perfectly abandoned to 
its own dropping and swinging, and by the pallid, sardonic- 
smiling face above. Yet automatically she stiffened herself 
away, and disapproved. It seemed almost an obscenity, in a 
man who talked as a rule so very seriously. 

“Why not like that?” he mocked. And immediately he 
dropped again into the incredibly rapid, slack-waggling dance, 
watching her malevolently. And moving in the rapid, station- 
ary dance, he came a little nearer, and reached forward with 
an incredibly mocking, satiric gleam on his face, and would 
have kissed her again, had she not started back. 

“No, don’t!” she cried, really afraid. 

“Cordelia after all,” he said satirically. She was stung, as 
if this were an insult. She knew he intended it as such, and 
it bewildered her. 

“And you,” she cried in retort, “why do you always take 
your soul in your mouth, so frightfully full?” 

“So that I can spit it out the more readily,” he said, pleased 
by his own retort. 

Gerald Crich, his tace narrowing to an intent gleam, fol- 
lowed up the hill with quick strides, straight after Gudrun. 
The cattle stood with their noses together on the brow of a 
slope, watching the scene below, the men in white hovering 
about the white forms of the women, watching above all Gud- 


> WATER-PARTY “193 


run, who was advancing slowly towards them. She stood a 
moment, glancing back at Gerald, and then at the cattle. 
Then in a sudden motion, she lifted her arms and rushed 


sheer upon the long-horned bullocks, in shuddering irregular 


runs, pausing for a second and looking at them, then lifting 
her hands and running forward with a flash, till they ceased 
pawing the ground, and gave way, snorting with terror, lift- 
ing their heads from the ground and flinging themselves away, 
galloping off into the evening, becoming tiny in the distance, 
and still not stopping. 

Gudrun remained staring after them, with a mask-like de- 
fiant face. 

“Why do you want to drive them mad?” asked Gerald, 
coming up with her. 

She took no notice of him, only averted her face from him. 

“Tt’s not safe, you know,” he persisted. “They’re nasty, 
when they do turn.” 

“Turn where? Turn away?” she mocked loudly. 

“No,” he said, “turn against you.” 

“Turn against me?” she mocked. 

He could make nothing of this. 

“Anyway, they gored one of the farmer’s cows to death, 
the other day,” he said. 

“What do I care?” she said. 

“IJ cared though,” he replied, “seeing that they’re my 
cattle.” 

“How are they yours! You haven’t swallowed them. Give 
me one of them now,” she said, holding out her hand. 

“You know where they are,” he said, pointing over the 
hill. “You can have one if you’d like it sent to you later on.” 

She looked at him inscrutably. 

“You think I’m afraid of you and your cattle, don’t you?” 


_ she asked. 


4} 
’ 


His eyes narrowed dangerously. There was a faint domi- 


_ heering smile on his face. 


“Why should I think that?” he said. 
She was watching him all the time with her dark, dilated, 


_ inchoate eyes. She leaned forward and swung round her arm, 


194 WOMEN IN LOVE 


catching him a blow on the face with the back of her hand. 

“That’s why,” she said. 

And she felt in her soul an unconquerable lust for deep 
brutality against him. She shut off the fear and dismay that 
filled her conscious mind. She wanted to do as she did, she 
was not going to be afraid. 

He recoiled from the heavy blow across the face. He be- 
came deadly pale, and a dangerous flame darkened his eyes. 
For some seconds he could not speak, his lungs were so suf- 
fused with blood, his heart stretched almost to bursting with 
a great gush of ungovernable rage. It was as if some res- 
ervoir of black anger had burst within him, and swamped him. 

“You have struck the first blow,” he said at last, forcing 
the words from his lungs, in a voice so soft and low, it sounded 
like a dream within her, not spoken in the outer air. 

“And I shall strike the last,” she retorted involuntarily, with 
confident assurance. He was silent, he did not contradict her. 

She stood negligently, staring away from him, into the dis- 
tance. On the edge of her consciousness the question was ask- 
ing itself, automatically: 

“Why are you behaving in this impossible and ridiculous 
fashion?” But she was sullen, she half shoved the question 
out of herself. She could not get it clean away, so she felt 
self-conscious. 

Gerald, very pale, was watching her closely. His eyes were 
lit up with intent lights, absorbed and gleaming. She turned 
suddenly on him. 

“It’s you who make me behave like this, you know,” she 
said, almost suggestive. 

“T? How?” he said. 

But she turned away, and set off towards the lake. Below, 
on the water, lanterns were coming alight, faint ghosts of warm 
flame floating in the pallor of the first twilight. The earth 
was spread with darkness, like lacquer, overhead was a pale 
sky, all primrose, and the lake was pale as milk in one part. 
Away at the landing stage, tiniest points of coloured rays were 
stringing themselves in the dusk. The launch was being illu- 
minated. All round, shadow was gathering from the trees. 


WATER-PARTY 195 


Gerald, white like a presence in his summer clothes, was fol- 
lowing down the open grassy slope. Gudrun waited for him 
to come up. Then she softly put out her hand and touched 
him, saying softly: 

“Don’t be angry with me.’ 

A flame flew over him, foe he was unconscious. Yet he 
stammered: 

“I’m not angry with you. I’m in love with you.” 

His mind was gone, he grasped for sufficient mechanical con- 
trol, to save himself. She laughed a silvery little mockery, yet 
intolerably caressive. 

“That’s one way of putting it,’ she said. 

The terrible swooning burden on his mind, the awftl swoon- 
ing, the loss of all his control, was too much for him. 

He grasped her arm in his one hand, as if his hand were 
iron. 

“Tt’s all right, then, is it?”’ he said, holding her arrested. 

She looked at the face with the fixed eyes, set before her, 
and her blood ran cold. 

“Yes, it’s all right,” she said softly, as if drugged, her voice 
crooning and witch-like. 

He walked on beside her, a striding, mindless body. But 
he recovered a little as he went. He suffered badly. He had 
killed his brother when a boy, and was set apart, like Cain. 

They found Birkin and Ursula sitting together by the boats, 
talking and laughing. Birkin had been teasing Ursula. 

“Do you smell this little marsh?” he said, sniffing the air. He 
was very sensitive to scents, and quick in understanding them. 

“Tt’s rather nice,” she said. 

“No,” he replied, “alarming.” 

“Why alarming?” she laughed. 

“Tt seethes and seethes, a river of darkness,” he said, “‘put- 
ting forth lilies and snakes, and the ignis fatuus, and rolling 
all the time onward. That’s what we never take into count— 
that it rolls onwards.” 

“What does?” 

“The other river, the black river. We always consider the 
silver river of life, rolling on and quickening all the world to 


196 WOMEN IN LOVE 


a brightness, on and on to heaven, flowing into a bright eternal 
sea, a heaven of angels thronging. But the other is our real 
reality—” | 

“But what other? I don’t see any other,” said Ursula. 

“Tt is your reality, nevertheless,” he said; “that dark river 
of dissolution. You see it rolls in us just as the other rolls— 
the black river of corruption. And our flowers are of this— 
our sea-born Aphrodite, all our white phosphorescent flowers 
of sensuous perfection, all our reality, nowadays.” 

“You mean that Aphrodite is really deathly?” asked 
Ursula. 

“T mean she is the flowering mystery of the death-process, 
yes,” he replied. “When the stream of synthetic creation 
lapses, we find ourselves part of the inverse process, the blood 
of destructive creation. Aphrodite is born in the first spasm 
of universal dissolution—then the snakes and swans and lotus 
—marsh-flowers—and Gudrun and Gerald—born in the 
process of destructive creation.” | 

“And you and me—?” she asked. 

“Probably,” he replied. “In part, certainly. Whether we 
are that, in toto, I don’t yet know.” 

“You mean we are flowers of dissolution—fleurs du mal? 
I don’t feel as if I were,” she protested. 

He was silent for a time. 

“T don’t feel as if we were, altogether,’ he replied. “Some 
people are pure flowers of dark corruption—lilies. But there 
ought to be some roses, warm and flamy. You know Herak- 
leitos says ‘a dry soul is best.’ I know so well what that 
means. Do you?” 

“T’m not sure,” Ursula replied. ‘But what if people are all 
flowers of dissolution—when they’re flowers at all—what dif- 
ference does it make?” 

“No difference—and all the difference. Dissolution rolls on, 
just as production does,” he said. “It is a progressive process 
—and it ends in universal nothing—the end of the world, if 
you like. But why isn’t the world as good as the beginning?” 

“T suppose it isn’t,” said Ursula, rather angry. 

“Oh yes, ultimately,” he said. “It means a new cycle of 


WATER-PARTY 197 


creation after—but not for us. If it is the end, then we are 
of the end—fieurs du mal if you like. If we are fleurs du mal, 
we are not roses of happiness, and there you are.” 

“But I think I am,” said Ursula. “I think I am a rose of 
happiness.” 

“Ready-made?” he asked ironically. 

“No—real,” she said, hurt. 

“Tf we are the end, we are not the beginning,” he said. 

“Ves we are,” she said. “The beginning comes out of the 
end.” 

“After it, not out of it. After us, not out of us.” 

“You are a devil, you know, really,” she said. “You want 
to destroy our hope. You want us to be deathly.” 

“No,” he said, “I only want us to know what we are.” 

“Ha!” she cried in anger. “You only want us to know 
death.” 

“You're quite right,” said the soft voice of Gerald, out of 
the dusk behind. 

Birkin rose. Gerald and Gudrun came up. They all began 
to smoke, in the moments of silence. One after another, Birkin 
lighted their cigarettes. The match flickered in the twilight, 
and they were all smoking peacefully by the water-side. The 
lake was dim, the light dying from off it, in the midst of the 
dark land. The air all round was intangible, neither here nor 
there, and there was an unreal noise of banjoes, or suchlike 
music. 

As the golden swim of light overhead died out, the moon 
gained brightness, and seemed to begin to smile forth her 
ascendancy. The dark woods on the opposite shore melted 
into universal shadow. And amid this universal under-shadow, 
there was a scattered intrusion of lights. Far down the lake 
were fantastic pale strings of colour, like beads of wan fire, 
green and red and yellow. The music came out in a little 
puff, as the launch, all illuminated, veered into the great 
shadow, stirring her outlines of half-living lights, puffing out 
her music in little drifts. , 

All were lighting up. Here and there, close against the 
faint water, and at the far end of the lake, where the water 


198 WOMEN IN LOVE 


lay milky in the last whiteness of the sky, and there was no 
shadow, solitary, frail flames of lanterns floated from the un- 
seen boats. There was a sound of oars, and a boat passed 
from the pallor into the darkness under the wood, where her 
lanterns seemed to kindle into fire, hanging in ruddy lovely 
globes. And again, in the lake, shadowy red gleams hovered 
in reflection about the boat. Everywhere were these noiseless 
ruddy creatures of fire drifting near the surface .of the water, 
caught at by the rarest, scarce visible reflections. 

Birkin brought the lanterns from the bigger boat, and the 
four shadowy white figures gathered round, to light them. 
Ursula held up the first, Birkin lowered the light from the 
rosy, glowing cup of his hands, into the depths of the lantern. 
‘It was kindled, and they all stood back to look at the great 
blue moon of light that hung from Ursula’s hand, casting a 
strange gleam on her face. It flickered, and Birkin went bend- 
ing over the well of light. His face shone out like an appari- 
tion, so unconscious, and again, something demoniacal. Ursula 
was dim and veiled, looming over him. 

“That is all right,” said his voice softly. 

She held up the lantern. It had a flight of storks streaming 
through a turquoise sky of light, over a dark earth. 

“This is beautiful,” she said. 

“Lovely,” echoed Gudrun, who wanted to hold one also, and 
lift it up full of beauty. 

“Light one for me,” she said. Gerald stood by her, inca- 
pacitated. Birkin lit the lantern she held up. Her heart beat 
with anxiety, to see how beautiful it would be. It was prim- 
rose yellow, with tall straight flowers growing darkly from 
their dark leaves, lifting their heads into the primrose day, 
while butterflies hovered about them, in the pure clear light. 

Gudrun gave a little cry of excitement, as if pierced with 
delight. 

“Tsn’t it beautiful, oh, isn’t it beautiful!” 

Her soul was really pierced with beauty, she was translated 
beyond herself. Gerald leaned near to her, into her zone of 
light, as if to see. He came close to her, and stood touching 
her, looking with her at the primrose-shining globe. And 


WATER-PARTY 199 


she turned her face to his, that was faintly bright in the light 
of the lantern, and they stood together in one luminous union, 
close together and ringed round with light, all the rest ex- 
cluded. 

Birkin looked away, and went to light Ursula’s second lan- 
tern. It had a pale ruddy sea-bottom, with black crabs and sea- 
weed moving sinuously under a transparent sea, that passed 
into flamy ruddiness above. 

“You’ve got the heavens above, and the waters under the 
earth,” said Birkin to her. 

“Anything but the earth itself,” she laughed, watching his 
live hands that hovered to attend to the light. 

“I’m dying to see what my second one is,” cried Gudrun, in 
a vibrating rather strident voice, that seemed to repel the 
others from her. 

Birkin went and kindled it. It was of a lovely deep blue 
colour, with a red floor, and a great white cuttle-fish flowing 
in white soft streams all over it. The cuttle-fish had a face 
that stared straight from the heart of the light, very fixed 
and coldly intent. 

“How truly terrifying!” exclaimed Gudrun, in a voice of 
horror. Gerald, at her side, gave a low laugh. 

“But isn’t it really fearful!” she cried in dismay. 

Again he laughed, and said: 

“Change it with Ursula, for the crabs.” 

Gudrun was silent for a moment. 

“Ursula,” she said, “could you bear to have this fearful 
thing?” 

“T think the colouring is lovely,” said Ursula. 

“So do I,” said Gudrun. “But could you bear to have it 
swinging to your boat? Don’t you want to destroy it at once?” 

“Oh no,” said Ursula. “I don’t want to destroy it.” 

“Well do you mind having it instead of the crabs? Are 
you sure you don’t mind?” 

Gudrun came forward to exchange lanterns. 

_ “No,” said Ursula, yielding up the crabs and receiving the 
cuttle-fish. 


200 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Yet she could not help feeling rather resentful at the way 
in which Gudrun and Gerald should assume a right over her, 
a precedence. 

“Come then,” said Birkin. “T’Il put them on the boats.” 

He and Ursula were moving away to the big boat. 

“T suppose you'll row me back, Rupert,” said Geral, out of 
the pale shadow of the evening. 

“Won’t you go with Gudrun in the canoet’ said Birkin. 
“Tt’ll be more interesting.” 

There was a moment’s pause. Birkin and Ursula stood 
dimly, with their swinging lanterns, by the water’s edge. The 
world was all illusive. 

“Ts that all right?” said Gudrun to him. 

“It'll suit me very well,” he said. “But what about you, 
and the rowing? I don’t see why you should pull me.” 

“Why not?” he said. “I can pull you as well as I could 
pull Ursula.” 

By her tone he could tell she wanted to have him in the 
boat to herself, and that she was subtly gratified that she 
should have power over them both. He gave himself, in a 
strange, electric submission. 

She handed him the lanterns, whilst she went to fix the 
cane at the end of the canoe. He followed after her, and 
stood with the lanterns dangling against his white-flannelled 
thighs, emphasising the shadow around. 

“Kiss me before we go,” came his voice softly from out 
of the shadow above. 

She stopped her work in real, momentary astonishment. 

“But why?” she exclaimed, in pure surprise. 

“Whyr” he echoed, ironically. 

And she looked at him fixedly for some moments.’ Then 
she leaned forward and kissed him, with a slow, luxurious 
kiss, lingering on the mouth. And then she took the lanterns 
from him, while he stood swooning with the perfect fire that 
burned in all his joints. 

They lifted the canoe into the water, Gudrun took her anit 
and Gerald pushed off. 

“Are you sure you don’t hurt your hand, doing that?” she 


Se ee 


WATER-PARTY 201 


asked, solicitous. ‘Because I could have done it perfectly.” 

“I don’t hurt myself,” he said in a low, soft voice, that 
caressed her with inexpressible beauty. 

And she watched him as he sat near her, very near to her, 
in the stern of the canoe, his legs coming towards hers, his 
feet touching hers. And she paddled softly, lingeringly, long- 
ing for him to say something meaningful to her. But he re- 
mained silent. 

“You like this, do you?” she said, in a gentle, solicitous 
voice. 

He laughed shortly. 

“There is a space between us,” he said, in the same low, 
unconscious voice, as if something were speaking out of him. 
And she was as if magically aware of their being balanced in 
separation, in the boat. She swooned with acute comprehen- 
sion and pleasure. 

“But I’m very near,” she said caressively, gaily. 

“Yet distant, distant,” he said. 

Again she was silent with pleasure, before she answered, 
speaking with a reedy, thrilled voice: 

“Yet we cannot very well change, whilst we are on the 
water.” She caressed him subtly and strangely, having him 
completely at her mercy. 

A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and 
moon-like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from 
a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed 
and washed with her faintly-splashing paddles, trailing her 
strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the 
whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman 
candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illumi- 
nating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creep- 
ing round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, 
the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, 
there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music. 

Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, 
not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s 
lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and 
iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was 


202 WOMEN IN LOVE 


aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their 
softness behind him. 

Gudrun rested her paddle and looked round. The canoe 
lifted with the lightest ebbing of the water. Gerald’s white 
knees were very near to her. 

“Tsn’t it beautiful!” she said softly, as if reverently. 

She looked at him, as he leaned back against the faint 
crystal of the lantern-light. She could see his face, although 
it was a pure shadow. But it was a piece of twilight. And 
her breast was keen with passion for him, he was so beautiful 
in his male stillness and mystery. It was a certain pure efflu- 
ence of maleness, like an aroma from his softly, firmly moulded 
contours, a certain rich perfection of his presence, that touched 
her with an ecstasy, a thrill of pure intoxication. She loved 
tc look at him. For the present she did not want to touch 
him, to know the further, satisfying substance of his living 
body. He was purely intangible, yet so near. Her hands lay 
on the paddle like slumber, she only wanted to see him, like 
a crystal shadow, to feel his essential presence. 

“Yes,” he said vaguely. “It is very beautiful.” 

He was listening to the faint near sounds, the dropping of 
water-drops from the oar-blades, the slight drumming of the 
lanterns behind him, as they rubbed against one another, the 
occasional rustling of Gudrun’s full skirt, an alien land noise. 
His mind was almost submerged, he was almost transfused, 
lapsed out for the first time in his life, into the things about 
him. For he always kept such a keen attentiveness, concen- 
trated and unyielding in himself. Now he had let go, imper- 
ceptibly he was melting into oneness with the whole. It was 
like pure, perfect sleep, his first great sleep of life. He had 
been so insistent, so guarded, all his life. But here was sleep, 
and peace, and perfect lapsing out. 

“Shall I row to the landing-stage?” asked Gudrun wistfully. 

“Anywhere,” he answered. “Let it drift.” 

“Tell me then, if we are running into anything,” she replied, 
in that very quiet, toneless voice of sheer intimacy. 

“The lights will show,” he said. 

So they drifted almost motionless, in silence. He wanted 


WATER-PARTY 203 


silence, pure and whole. But she was uneasy yet for some 
word, for some assurance. 

“Nobody will miss you?” she asked, anxious for some com- 
munication. 

“Miss me?” he echoed. ‘No! Why?” 
~ “TI wondered if anybody would be looking for you.” 

“Why should they look for me?” And then he remembered 
his manners. “But perhaps you want to get back,” he said, 
in a changed voice. 

“No, I don’t want to get back,” she replied. ‘No, I assure 
you.” 

“You’re quite sure it’s all right for you?” 

“Perfectly all right.” 

And again they were still. The launch twanged and hooted, 
somebody was singing. Then as if the night smashed, sud- 
denly there was a great shout, a confusion of shouting, war- 
ring on the water, then the horrid noise of paddles reversed 
and churned violently. 

Gerald sat up, and Gudrun looked at him in fear. 

“Somebody in the water,” he said, angrily, and desperately, 
looking keenly across the dusk. “Can you row up?” 

“Where, to the launch?” asked Gudrun, in nervous panic. 

Ves,” 

“You'll tell me if I don’t steer straight,” she said, in nervous 
apprehension. i 

“You keep pretty level,” he said, and the canoe hastened 
forward. 

The shouting and the noise continued, sounding horrid 
through the dusk, over the surface of the water. 

“Wasn’t this bound to happen?” said Gudrun, with heavy’ 
hateful irony. But he hardly heard, and she glanced over 
her shoulder to see her way. The half-dark waters were 
sprinkled with lovely bubbles of swaying lights, the launch did 
not look far off. She was rocking her lights in the early night. 
Gudrun rowed as hard as she could. But now that it was a 
serious matter, she seemed uncertain and clumsy in her stroke, 
it was difficult to paddle swiftly. She glanced at his face. He 
was looking fixedly into the darkness, very keen and alert and 


204 WOMEN IN LOVE 


single in himself, instrumental. Her heart sank, she seemed 
to die a death. “Of course,” she said to herself, “nobody will 
be drowned. Of course they won’t. It would be too extrav- 
agant and sensational.” But her heart was cold, because of 
his sharp, impersonal face. It was as if he belonged naturally 
to dread and catastrophe, as if he were himself again. 

Then there came a child’s voice, a girl’s high, piercing shriek: 

“Di—Di—Di—Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Oh Di!” 

The blood ran cold in Gudrun’s veins. 

“It’s Diana, is it,” muttered Gerald. “The young monkey, 
she’d have to be up to some of her tricks.” 

And he glanced again at the paddle, the boat was not going 
quickly enough for him. It made Gudrun almost helpless at 
the rowing, this nervous stress. She kept up with all her might. 
Still the voices were calling and answering. 

“Where, where? There you are—that’s it. Which? No— 
No-o-o. Damn it all here, here—”’ Boats were hurrying from 
all directions to the scene, coloured lanterns could be seen 
waving close to the surface of the lake, reflections swaying 
after them in uneven haste. The steamer hooted again, for 
some unknown reason. Gudrun’s boat was travelling quickly, 
the lanterns were swinging behind Gerald. 

And then again came the child’s high, screaming voice, with 
a note ef weeping and impatience in it now: 

“Di—Oh Di—Oh Di—Di—!” 

It was a terrible sound, coming through the obscure air of 
the evening. 

“You'd be better if you were in bed, Winnie,” Gerald mut- 
tered to himself. 

He was stooping unlacing his shoes, pushing them off with 
the foot. Then he threw his soft hat into the bottom of 
the boat. 

“You can’t go into the water with your hurt hand,” said 
Gudrun, panting, in a low voice of horror. 

“What? It won’t hurt.” 

He had struggled out of his jacket, and had dropped it 
between his feet. He sat bare-headed, all in white now. He 
felt the belt at his waist. They were nearing the launch, 


WATER-PARTY 205 


which stood still big above them, her myriad lamps making 
lovely darts, and sinuous running tongues of ugly red and 
green and yellow light on the lustrous dark water, under the 
shadow. 

“Oh get her out! Oh Di, darling! Oh get her out! Oh 
Daddy, Oh Daddy!” moaned the child’s voice, in distraction. 
Somebody was in the water, with a life belt. Two boats pad- 
died near, their lanterns swinging ineffectually, the boats 
nosing round. 

“Hi there—Rockley!—hi there!” 

“Mr. Gerald!” came the captain’s terrified voice. “Miss 
Diana’s in the water.” 

“Anybody gone in for her?” came Gerald’s sharp voice. 

“Young Doctor Brindell, sir.” 

“‘Where?”’ 

“Can’t see no signs of them, sir. Everybody’s looking, but 
there’s nothing so far.” 

There was a moment’s ominous pause. 

“Where did she go in?” 

“T think—about where that boat is,” came the uncertain 
answer, “that one with red and green lights.” 

“Row there,” said Gerald quietly to Gudrun. 

“Get her out, Gerald, oh get her out,” the child’s voice was 
crying anxiously. He took no heed. 

“Lean back that way,” said Gerald to Gudrun, as he stood 
up in the frail boat. “She won’t upset.” 

In another moment, he had dropped clean down, soft and 
plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her 
boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she real- 
ised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So 
it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed — 
her of all feeling and thought. She felt he was gone out of 
the world, there was merely the same world, and absence, 
his absence. The night seemed large and vacuous. Lanterns 
swayed here and there, people were talking in an undertone 
on the launch and in the boats. She could hear Winifred 
moaning: “Ok do find her, Gerald, do find her,’ and some- 
one trying to comfort the child. Gudrun paddled aimlessly 


206 WOMEN IN LOVE 


here and there. The terrible, massive, cold, boundless surface 
of the water terrified her beyond words. Would he never 
come back? She felt she must jump into the water too, to 
know the horror also. 

She started, hearing someone say: “There he is.” She saw 
the movement of his swimming, like a water-rat. And she 
rowed involuntarily to him. But he was near another boat, 
a bigger one. Still she rowed towards him. She must be very 
near. She saw him—he looked like a seal. He looked like a 
seal as he took hold of the side of the boat. His fair hair 
was washed down on his round head, his face seemed to glisten 
suavely. She could hear him panting. 

Then he clambered into the boat. Oh, and the beauty of 
the subjection of his loins, white and dimly luminous as he 
climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to die. 
The beauty of his dim and luminous loins as he climbed into 
the boat, his back rounded and soft—ah, this was too much 
for her, too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal. The 
terrible hopelessness of fate, and of beauty, such beauty! 

He was not like a man to her, he was an incarnation, a great 
phase of life. She saw him press the water out of his face, and 
look at the bandage on his hand. And she knew it was all no 
good, and that she would never go beyond him, he was the 
final approximation of life to her. 

“Put the lights out, we shall see better,” came his voice, 
sudden and mechanical and belonging to the world of man. 
She could scarcely believe there was a world of man. She 
leaned round and blew out her lanterns. They were difficult 
to blow out. Everywhere the lights were gone save the col- 
oured points on the sides of the launch. The bluey-grey, early 
night spread level around, the moon was overhead, there were 
shadows of boats here and there. 
| Again there was a splash, and he was gone under. Gudrun 
sat, sick at heart, frightened of the great, level surface of the 
water, so heavy and deadly. She was so alone, with the level, 
unliving field of the water stretching beneath her. It was not 
a good isolation, it was a terrible, cold separation of suspense. 
She was suspended upon the surface of the insidious reality 


WATER-PARTY 207 


until such time as she also should disappear beneath it. 

Then she knew, by a stirring of voices, that he had climbed 
out again, into a boat. She sat wanting connection with him. 
Strenuously she claimed her connection with him, across the 
invisible space of the water. But round her heart was an 
isolation unbearable, through which nothing would penetrate. 

“Take the launch in. It’s no use keeping her there. Get 
lines for the dragging,’’ came the decisive, instrumental voice, 
that was full of the sound of the world. 

The launch began gradually to beat the waters. 

“Gerald! Gerald!” came the wild crying voice of Winifred. 
He did not answer. Slowly the launch drifted round in a 
pathetic, clumsy circle, and slunk away to the land, retreat- 
ing into the dimness. The wash of her paddles grew duller. 
Gudrun rocked in her light boat, and dipped the paddle auto- 
matically to steady herself. 

“Gudrun?” called Ursula’s voice. 

“Ursula!” 

The boats of the two sisters pulled together. 

“Where is Gerald?” said Gudrun. 

“He’s dived again,” said Ursula plaintively. “And I know 
he ought not, with his hurt hand and everything.” 

“T’ll take him in home this time,” said Birkin. 

The boats swayed again from the wash of steamer. Gud- 
run and Ursula kept a look-out for Gerald. 

“There he is!” cried Ursula, who had the sharpest eyes. He 
had not been long under. Birkin pulled towards him, Gudrun 
following. He swam slowly, and caught hold of the boat with 
his wounded hand. It slipped, and he sank back. 

“Why don’t you help him?” cried Ursula sharply. 

He came again, and Birkin leaned to help him in to the 
boat. Gudrun again watched Gerald climb out of the water, 
but this time slowly, heavily, with the blind clambering mo- 
tions of an amphibious beast, clumsy. Again the moon shone 
with faint luminosity on his white wet figure, on the stooping 
back and the rounded loins. But it looked defeated now, his 
body, it clambered and fell with slow clumsiness. He was 
breathing hoarsely too, like an animal that is suffering. He 


208 WOMEN IN LOVE 


sat slack and motionless in the boat, his head blunt and blind 
like a seal’s, his whole appearance inhuman, unknowing. Gud- 
run shuddered as she mechanically followed his boat. Birkin 
rowed without speaking to the landing-stage. 

“Where are you going?” Gerald asked suddenly, as if just 
waking up. 

' “Home,” said Birkin. 

“Oh no!” said Gerald imperiously. ‘We can’t go home 
while they’re in the water. Turn back again, I’m going to 
find them.” The women were frightened, his voice was so 
imperative and dangerous, almost mad, not to be opposed. 

“No,” said Birkin. “You can’t.” There was a strange fluid 
compulsion in his voice. Gerald was silent in a battle of 
wills. It was as if he would kill the other man. But Birkin 
rowed evenly and unswerving, with an inhuman inevitability. 

“Why should you interfere?” said Gerald, in hate. 

Birkin did not answer. He rowed towards the land. And 
Gerald sat mute, like a dumb beast, panting, his teeth chatter- 
ing, his arms inert, his head like a seal’s head. 

They came to the landing-stage. Wet and naked-looking, 
Gerald climbed up the few steps. There stood his father, in 
the night. 

“Father!” he said. 

“Yes my boy? Go home and get those things off.” 

“We shan’t save them, father,” said Gerald. 

“There’s hope yet, my boy.” 

“I’m afraid not. There’s no knowing where they are. You 
can’t find them. And there’s a current, as cold as hell.” 

“We'll let the water out,” said the father. “Go home you 
and look to yourself. See that he’s looked after, Rupert,” he 
added in a neutral voice. 

“Well, father, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m afraid it’s my 
fault. But it can’t be helped; I’ve done what. I could for the 
moment. I could go on diving, of course—not much, though 
—and not much use—” 

He moved away barefoot, on the planks of the platform. 
Then he trod on something sharp. 

“Of course, you’ve got no shoes on,” said Birkin. 


WATER-PARTY 209 


“His shoes are here!” cried Gudrun from below. She was 
making fast her boat. 

Gerald waited for them to be brought to him. Gudrun came 
with them. He pulled them on his feet. 

“If you once die,” he said, “then when it’s over, it’s finished. 
Why come to life again? There’s room under that water there 
for thousands.” 

“Two is enough,” she said murmuring. 

He dragged on his second shoe. He was shivering violently, 
and his jaw shook as he spoke. 

“That’s true,” he said, ‘maybe. But it’s curious how much 
room there seems, a whole universe under there; and as cold as 
hell, you’re as helpless as if your head was cut off.” He could 
scarcely speak, he shook so violently. “There’s one thing about 
our family, you know,” he continued. “Once anything goes 
wrong, it can never be put right again—not with us. I’ve 
noticed it all my life—you can’t put a thing right, once it has 
gone wrong.” | 

They were walking across the high-road to the house. 

“And do you know, when you are down there, it is so cold, 
actually, and so endless, so different really from what it is on 
top, so endless—you wonder how it is so many are alive, why 
we’re up here. Are you going? I shall see you again, shan’t 
i? Good-night, and thank you. Thank you very much.” 

The two girls waited a while, to see if there were any hope. 
The moon shone clearly overhead, with almost impertinent 
brightness, the small dark boats clustered on the water, there 
were voices and subdued shouts. But it was all to no pur- 
pose. Gudrun went home when Birkin returned. 

He was commissioned to open the sluice that let out the 
water from the lake, which was pierced at one end, near the 
high-road, thus serving as a reservoir to supply with water the 
distant mines, in case of necessity. ‘Come with me,” he said to 
Ursula, “and then I will walk home with you, when I’ve done 
this.” 

He called at the water-keeper’s cottage and took the key of 
the sluice. They went through a little gate from the high- 
road, to the head of the water, where was a great stone basin 


210 WOMEN IN LOVE 


which received the overflow, and a flight of stone steps de- 
scended into the depths of the water itself. At the head of the 
steps was the lock of the sluice-gate. 

The night was silver-grey and perfect, save for the scattered 
restless sound of voices. The grey sheen of the moonlight 
caught the stretch of water, dark boats plashed and moved. 
But Ursula’s mind ceased to be receptive, everything was un- 
important and unreal. | 

Birkin fixed the iron handle of the sluice, and turned it 
with a wrench. The cogs began slowly to rise. He turned 
and turned, like a slave, his white figure became distinct. 
Ursula looked away. She could not bear to see him winding 
heavily and laboriously, bending and rising mechanically like 
a slave, turning the handle. 

Then, a real shock to her, there came a loud splashing of 
water from out of the dark, tree-filled hollow beyond the road, 
a splashing that deepened rapidly to a harsh roar, and then 
became a heavy, booming noise of a great body of water fall- 
ing solidly all the time. It occupied the whole of the night, 
this great steady booming of water, everything was drowned 
within it, drowned and lost. Ursula seemed to have to 
struggle for her life. She put her hands over her ears, and 
looked at the high bland moon. 

“Can’t we go now?” she cried to Birkin, who was watching 
the water on the steps, to see if it would get any lower. It 
seemed to fascinate him. He looked at her and nodded. 

The little dark boats had moved nearer, people were crowd- 
ing curiously along the hedge by the high-road, to see what 
was to be seen. Birkin and Ursula went to the cottage with 
the key, then turned their backs on the lake. She was in 
great haste. She could not bear the terrible crushing boom 
of the escaping water. 

“Do you think they are dead?” she cried in a high voice, 
to make herself heard. 

“Ves,” he replied. 

“Tsn’t it horrible!” 

He paid no heed. They walked up the hill, further and 
further away from the noise. 


WATER-PARTY 211 


“Do you mind very much?” she asked him. 

“T don’t mind about the dead,” he said, “once they are 
dead. The worst of it is, they cling on to the living, and won’t 
let go.” 

She pondered for a time. 

“Ves,” she said. “The fact of death doesn’t really seem to 
matter much, does it?” 

“No,” he said. “What does it matter if Diana Crich is 
alive or dead?” 

“Doesn’t it?” she said, shocked. 

“No, why should it? Better she were dead—she’ll be much 
more real. She'll be positive in death. In life she was a fret- 
ting, negated thing.” 

“You are rather horrible,” murmured Ursula. 

“No! Id rather Diana Crich were dead. Her living some- 
how was all wrong. As for the young man, poor devil—he’ll 
find his way out quickly instead of slowly. Death is all right— 
nothing better.” 

“Yet you don’t want to die,” she challenged him. 

He was silent for a time. Then he said, in a voice that was 
frightening to her in its change: 

“T should like to be through with it—I should like to be 
through with the death process.” 

“And aren’t you?” asked Ursula nervously. 

They walked on for some way in silence, under the trees. 
Then he said, slowly, as if afraid: 

“There is life which belongs to death, and there is life which 
isn’t death. One is tired of the life that belongs to death— 
our kind of life. But whether it is finished, God knows. I 
want love that is like sleep, like being born again, vulnerable 
as a baby that just comes into the world.” 

Ursula listened, half attentive, half avoiding wtiat he said. 
She seemed to catch the drift of his statement, and then she 
drew away. She wanted to hear, but she did not want to be 
implicated. She was reluctant to yield there, where he wanted 
her, to yield as it were, her very identity. 

“Why should love be like sleep?” she asked sadly. 

“T don’t know. So that it is like death—I do want to die 


212 WOMEN IN LOVE 


from this life—and yet it is more than life itself. One is 
delivered over like a naked infant from the womb, all the old 
defences and the old body gone, and new air around one, that 
has never been breathed before.” 

She listened, making out what he said. She knew, as well 
as he knew, that words themselves do not convey meaning, 
that they are but a gesture we make, a dumb show like any 
other. And she seemed to feel his gesture through her blood, 
and she drew back, even though her desire sent her forward. 

“But,” she said gravely, “didn’t you say you wanted some- 
thing that was not love—something beyond love?” 

He turned in confusion. There was always confusion in 
speech. Yet it must be spoken. Which ever way one moved, 
if one were to move forwards, one must break a way through. 
And to know, to give utterance, was to break a way through 
the walls of the prison as the infant in labour strives through 
the walls of the womb. There is no new movement now, with- 
out the breaking through of the old body, deliberately, in 
knowledge, in the struggle to get out. 

“T don’t want love,” he said. “I don’t want to know you. I 
want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, 
so we are found different. One shouldn’t talk when one is 
tired and wretched. One Hamletises, and it seems a lie. Only 
believe me when I show you a bit of healthy pride and in- 
souciance. I hate myself serious.” 

“Why shouldn’t you be serious?” she said. . 

He thought for a minute, then he said, sulkily: 

“J don’t know.” Then they walked on in silence, at outs. 
He was vague and lost. 

“Tsn’t it strange,” she said, suddenly putting her hand on 
his arm, with a loving impulse, “how we always talk like this! 
I suppose we do love each other, in some way.” 

“Oh yes,” he said; “too much.” 

She laughed almost gaily. 

“You’d have to have it your own way, wouldn’t you?” she 
teased. “You could never take it on trust.” 

He changed, laughed softly, and turned and took her in his 
arms, in the middle of the road. 


WATER-PARTY 213 


“Yes,” he said softly. 

And he kissed her face and brow, slowly, gently, with:a 
sort of delicate happiness which surprised her extremely, and 
to which she could not respond. They were soft, blind kisses, 
perfect in their stillness. Yet she held back from them. It 
was like strange moths, very soft and silent, settling on her 
from the darkness of her soul. She was uneasy. She drew 
away. 

“Isn’t somebody coming?” she said. 

So they looked down the dark road, then set off again walk- 
ing towards Beldover. Then suddenly, to show him she was 
no shallow prude, she stopped and held him tight, hard against 
her, and covered his face with hard, fierce kisses of passion. 
In spite of his otherness, the old blood beat up in him. 

“Not this, not this,” he whimpered to himself, as the first 
perfect mood of softness and sleep-loveliness ebbed back away 
from the rushing of passion that came up to his limbs and over 
his face as she drew him. And soon he was a perfect hard flame 
of passionate desire for her. Yet in the small core of the 
flame was an unyielding anguish of another thing. But this 
also was lost; he only wanted her, with an extreme desire that 
seemed inevitable as death, beyond question. 

Then, satisfied and shattered, fulfilled and destroyed, he 
went home away from her, drifting vaguely through the dark- 
ness, lapsed into the old fire of burning passion. Far away, 
far away, there seemed to be a small lament in the darkness. 
But what did it matter? What did it matter, what did any- 
thing matter save this ultimate and triumphant experience of 
physical passion, that had blazed up anew like a new spell of 
life. “I was becoming quite dead-alive, nothing but a word- 
bag,” he said in triumph, scorning his other self. Yet some- 
where far off and small, the other hovered. 

The men were still dragging the lake when he got back. 
He stood on the bank and heard Gerald’s voice. The water 
was still booming in the night, the moon was fair, the hills 
beyond were elusive. The lake was sinking. There came the 
raw smell of the banks, in the night air. 

Up at Shortlands there were lights in the windows, as if 


214 WOMEN IN LOVE 


nobody had gone to bed. On the landing-stage was the old 
doctor, the father of the young man who was lost. He stood 
quite silent, waiting. Birkin also stood and watched. Gerald 
came up in a boat. 

“You still here, Rupert?” he said. “We can’t get them. 
The bottom slopes, you know, very steep. The water lies 
between two very sharp slopes, with little branch valleys, and 
God knows where the drift will take you. It isn’t as if it 
was a level bottom. You never know where you are, with the 
dragging.” 

“Is there any need for you to be working?” said Birkin. 
“Wouldn’t it be much better if you went to bed?” 

“To bed! Good God, do you think I should sleep? We'll 
find them, before I go away from here.” 

“But the men would find them just the same without you— 
why should you insist?” 

Gerald looked up at him. Then he put his hand affection- 
ately on Birkin’s shoulder, saying: 

“Don’t you bother about me, Rupert. If there’s anybody’s 
health to think about, it’s yours, not mine. How do you feel 
yourself?” 

“Very well. But you, you spoil your own chance of life— 
you waste your best self.” 

Gerald was silent for a moment. Then he said: 

“Waste it? What else is there to do with it?” 

“But leave this, won’t you? You force yourself into hor- 
rors, and put a mill-stone of beastly memories round your 
neck. Come away now.” 

‘A mill-stone of beastly memories!” Gerald repeated. Then 
he put his hand again affectionately on Birkin’s shoulder. 
“God, you’ve got such a telling way of putting things, Rupert, 
you have.” 

Birkin’s heart sank. He was irritated and weary of having 
a telling way of putting things. 

“Won’t you leave it? Come over to my place”—he urged 
as one urges a drunken man. 

“No,” said Gerald coaxingly, his arm across the other man’s 
shoulder. “Thanks very much, Rupert—I shall be glad to 


WATER-PARTY 215 


come to-morrow, if that'll do. You understand, don’t you? 
I want to see this job through. But I’ll come to-morrow, right 
enough. Oh, I’d rather come and have a chat with you than 
—than do anything else, I verily believe. Yes, I would. You 
mean a lot to me, Rupert, more than you know.” 

“What do I mean, more than I know?” asked Birkin irri- 
tably. He was acutely aware of Gerald’s hand on his shoulder. 
And he did not want this altercation. He wanted the other 
man to come out of the ugly misery. 

“T’ll tell you another time,” said Gerald coaxingly. 

“Come along with me now—I want you to come,” said 
Birkin. 

There was a pause, intense and real. Birkin wondered why 
his own heart beat so heavily. Then Gerald’s fingers gripped 
hard and communicative into Birkin’s shoulder, as he said: 

“No, I'll see this job through, Rupert. Thank you—I know 
what you mean. We’re all right, you know, you and me.” 

“T may be all right, but I’m sure you’re not, mucking about 
here,” said Birkin. And he went away. 

The bodies of the dead were not recovered till towards dawn. 
Diana had her arms tight round the neck of the young man, 
choking him. 

“She killed him,” said Gerald. 

The moon sloped down the sky and sank at last. The lake 
was sunk to quarter size, it had horrible raw banks of clay, 
that smelled of raw rottenish water. Dawn roused faintly 
behind the eastern hill.. The water still boomed through the 
sluice. 

As the birds were whistling for the first morning, and the 
hills at the back of the desolate lake stood radiant with the 
new mists, there was a straggling procession up to Shortlands, 
men bearing the bodies on a stretcher, Gerald going beside 
them, the two grey-bearded fathers following in silence. In- 
doors the family was all sitting up, waiting. Somebody must 
go to tell the mother, in her room. The doctor in secret 
struggled to bring back his son, till he himself was exhausted. 

Over all the outlying district was a hush of dreadful excite- 
ment on that Sunday morning. The colliery people felt as if 


216 WOMEN IN LOVE 


this catastrophe had happened directly to themselves, indeed 
they were more shocked and frightened than if their own men 
had been killed. Such a tragedy in Shortlands, the high home 
of the district! One of the young mistresses, persisting in 
dancing on the cabin roof of the launch, wilful young madam, 
drowned in the midst of the festival, with the young doctor! ° 
Everywhere on the Sunday morning, the colliers wandered 
about, discussing the calamity. At all the Sunday dinners of 
the people, there seemed a strange presence. It was as if the 
angel of death were very near, there was a sense of the super- 
natural in the air. The men had excited, startled faces, the 
women looked solemn, some of them had been crying. The 
children enjoyed the excitement at first. There was an in- 
tensity in the air, almost magical. Did all enjoy it? Did all 
enjoy the thrill? 

Gudrun had wild ideas of rushing to comfort Gerald. She 
was thinking all the time of the perfect comforting, reassuring 
thing to say to him. She was shocked and frightened, but she 
put that away, thinking of how she should deport herself with 
Gerald: act her part. That was the real thrill: how she should 
act her part. 

Ursula was deeply and passionately in love with Birkin, and 
she was capable of nothing. She was perfectly callous about 
all the talk of the accident, but her estranged air looked like 
trouble. She merely sat by herself, whenever she could, and 
longed to see him again. She wanted him to come to the 
house,—she would not have it otherwise, he must come at 
once. She was waiting for him. She stayed indoors all day, 
waiting for him to knock at the door. Every minute, she 
glanced automatically at the window. He would be there. 


CHAPTER XV 
SUNDAY EVENING 


As the day wore on, the life-blood seemed to ebb away from 
Ursula, and within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. 
Her passion seemed to bleed to death, and there was noth- 
ing. She sat suspended in a state of complete nullity, harder 
to bear than death. 

“Unless something happens,” she said to herself, in the per- 
fect lucidity of final suffering, “I shall die. I am at the end 
of my line of life.” | 

She sat crushed and obliterated in a darkness that was the 
border of death. She realised how all her life she had been 
drawing nearer and nearer to this brink, where there was no 
beyond, from which one had to leap like Sappho into the 
unknown. The knowledge of the imminence of death was 
like a drug. Darkly, without thinking at all, she knew that 
she was near to death. She had travelled all her life along 
the line of fulfilment, and it was nearly concluded. She knew 
all she had to know, she had experienced all she had to expe- 
rience, she was fulfilled in a kind of bitter ripeness, there 
remained only to fall from the tree into death. And one must 
fulfil one’s development to the end, must carry the adventure 
to its conclusion. And the next step was over the border into 
death. So it was then! There was a certain peace in the 
knowledge. 

After all, when one was fulfilled, one was happiest in falling 
into death, as a bitter fruit plunges in its ripeness downwards. 
Death is a great consummation, a consummating experience. 
It is a development from life. That we know, while we are 
yet living. What then need we think for further? One can 
never see beyond the consummation. It is enough that death 
is a great and conclusive experience. Why should we ask 

217 


218 WOMEN IN LOVE 


what comes after the experience, when the experience is still 
unknown to us? Let us die, since the great experience is the 
one that follows now upon all the rest, death, which is the 
next great crisis in front of which we have arrived. If we 
wait, if we baulk the issue, we do but hang about the gates 
in undignified uneasiness. There it is, in front of us, as in 
front of Sappho, the illimitable space. ‘Thereinto goes the 
journey. Have we not the courage to go on with our journey, 
must we cry “I daren’t.” On ahead we will go, into death, and 
whatever death may mean. If a man can see the next step 
to be taken, why should he fear the next but one? Why ask 
about the next but one? Of the next step we are certain. It 
is the step into death. 

“T shall die—I shall quickly die,” said Ursula to herself, 
clear as if in a trance, clear, calm, and certain beyond 
human certainty. But somewhere behind, in the twilight, there 
was a bitter weeping and a hopelessness. That must not be 
attended to. One must go where the unfaltering spirit goes, 
there must be no baulking the issue, because of fear. No 
baulking the issue, no listening to the lesser voices. If the 
deepest desire be now, to go on into the unknown of death, 
shall one forfeit the deepest truth for one more shallow? 

“Then let it end,” she said to herself. It was a decision. 
It was not a question of taking one’s life—she would never 
kill herself, that was repulsive and violent. It was a question 
of knowing the next step. And the next step led into the 
space of death. Did it?—or was there——? 

Her thoughts drifted into unconsciousness, she sat as if 
asleep beside the fire. And then the thought came back. The 
space of death! Could she give herself to it? Ah yes—it 
was a sleep. She had had enough. So long she had held out 
and resisted. Now was the time to relinquish, not to resist 
any more. 

In a kind of spiritual trance, she yielded, she gave way, and 
all was dark. She could feel, within the darkness, the terrible 
assertion of her body, the unutterable anguish of dissolution, 
the only anguish that is too much, the far-off, awful nausea 
of dissolution set in within the body. 


SUNDAY EVENING 219 


“Does the body correspond so immediately with the spirit?” 
she asked herself. And she knew, with the clarity of ultimate 
knowledge, that the body is only one of the manifestations 
of the spirit, the transmutation of the integral spirit is the 
transmutation of the physical body as well. Unless I set my 
will, unless I absolve myself from the rhythm of life, fix my- 
self and remain static, cut off from living, absolved within my 
own will. But better die than live mechanically a life that is a 
repetition of repetitions. To die is to move on with the invisi- 
ble. To die is also a joy, a joy of submitting to that which is 
greater than the known, namely, the pure unknown. That is a 
joy. But to live mechanised and cut off within the motion of 
the will, to live as an entity absolved from the unknown, that is 
shameful and ignominious. There is no ignominy in death. 
There is complete ignominy in an unreplenished, mechanised 
life. Life indeed may be ignominious, shameful to the soul. 
But death is never a shame. Death itself, like the illimitable 
space, is beyond our sullying. 

To-morrow was Monday. Monday, the beginning of another 
school-week! Another shameful, barren school-week, mere 
routine and mechanical activity. Was not the adventure of 
death infinitely preferable? Was not death infinitely more 
lovely and noble than such a life? A life of barren routine, 
without inner meaning, without any real significance. How 
sordid life was, how it was a terrible shame to the soul, to live 
now! How much cleaner and more dignified to be 
dead! One could not bear any more of this shame of sordid 
routine and mechanical nullity. One might come to fruit in 
death. She had had enough. For where was life to be found? 
No flowers grow upon busy machinery, there is no sky to a 
routine, there is no space to a rotary motion. And all life 
was a rotary motion, mechanised, cut off from reality. There 
was nothing to look for from life—it was the same in all coun- 
tries and all peoples. The only window was death. One 
could look out on to the great dark sky of death with elation, 
as one had looked out of the class-room window as a child, 
and seen perfect freedom in the outside. Now one was not a 
child, and one knew that the soul was a prisoner within this 


220 WOMEN IN LOVE 


sordid vast edifice of life, and there was no escape, save in 
death. | 

But what a joy! What a gladness to think that whatever 
humanity did, it could not seize hold of the kingdom of death, 
to nullify that. The sea they turned into a murderous alley 
and a soiled road of commerce, disputed like the dirty land 
of a city every inch of it. The air they claimed too, shared it 
up, parcelled it out to certain owners, they trespassed in the 
air to fight for it. Everything was gone, walled in, with 
spikes on top of the walls, and one must ignominiously creep 
between the spiky walls through a labyrinth of life. 

But the great, dark, illimitable kingdom of death, there 
humanity was put to scorn. So much they could do upon 
earth, the multifarious little gods that they were. But the 
kingdom of death put them all to scorn, they dwindled into 
their true vulgar silliness in face of it. 

How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good 
to look forward to. There one would wash off all the lies and 
ignominy and dirt that had been put upon one here, a perfect 
bath of cleanness and glad refreshment, and go unknown, 
unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was rich, if only in 
the promise of perfect death. It was a gladness above all, 
that this remained to look forward to, the pure inhuman other- 
ness of death. 

Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the 
inhuman transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of 
it, what it is or is not. To know is human, and in death we 
do not know, we are not human. And the joy of this com- 
pensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and the sordidness 
of our humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we 
shall not know. The promise of this is our heritage, we look 
forward like heirs to their majority. 

Ursula sat quite still and quite forgotten, alone by the fire 
in the drawing-room. The children were playing in the kitchen, 
all the others were gone to church. And she was gone into 
the ultimate darkness of her own soul. 

She was startled by hearing the bell ring, away in the 


SUNDAY EVENING 221 


kitchen, the children came scudding along the passage in de- 
licious alarm. 

“Ursula, there’s somebody.” 

“T know. Don’t be silly,” she replied. She too was startled, 
almost frightened. She dared hardly go to the door. 

Birkin stood on the threshold, his rain-coat turned up to 
his ears. He had come now, now she was gone far away. She 
was aware of the rainy night behind him. 

“Oh, is it you?” she said. 

“TI am glad you are at home,” he said in a low voice, entering 
the house. 

“They are all gone to church.” 

He took off his coat and hung it up. The children were 
peeping at him round the corner. 

“Go and get undressed now, Billy and Dora,” said Ursula. 
“Mother will be back soon, and she'll be disappointed if you’re 
not in bed.” 

The children, in a sudden angelic mood, retired without a 
word. Birkin and Ursula went into the drawing-room. The 
fire burned low. He looked at her and wondered ‘at the 
luminous delicacy of her beauty, and the wide shining of her 
eyes. He watched from a distance, with wonder in his heart, 
she seemed transfigured with light. 

“What have you been doing all day?” he asked her. 

“Only sitting about,” she said. 

He looked at her. There was a change in her. But she was 
separate from him. She remained apart, in a kind of bright- 
ness. They both sat silent in the soft light of the lamp. He 
felt he ought to go away again, he ought not to have come. 
Still he did not gather enough resolution to move. But he 
was de trop, her mood was absent and separate. 

Then there came the voices of the two children calling shyly 
outside the door, softly, with self-excited timidity: 

“Ursula! Ursula!” 

She rose and opened the door. On the threshold stood the 
two children in their long nightgowns, with wide-eyed, angelic 
faces. They were being very good for the moment, playing 
the rdle perfectly of two obedient children. 


222 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Shall you take us to bed!” said Billy, in a loud whisper. 

“Why you are angels to-night,” she said softly. ‘“Won’t 
you come and say good-night to Mr. Birkin?” 

The children merged shyly into the room, on bare feet. 
Billy’s face was wide and grinning, but there was a great 
solemnity of being good in his round blue eyes. Dora, peep- 
ing from the floss of her fair hair, hung back like some tiny 
Dryad, that has no soul. 

“Will you say good-night to me?” asked Birkin, in a voice 
that was strangely soft and smooth. Dora drifted away at 
once, like a leaf lifted on a breath of wind. But Billy went 
softly forward, slow and willing, lifting his pinched-up mouth 
implicitly to be kissed. Ursula watched the full, gathered lips 
of the man gently touch those of the boy, so gently. Then 
Birkin lifted his fingers and touched the boy’s round, con- 
fiding cheek, with a faint touch of love. Neither spoke. Billy 
seemed angelic like a cherub boy, or like an acolyte, Birkin 
was a tall, grave angel looking down to him. 

“Are you going to be kissed?” Ursula broke in, speaking to 
the little girl. But Dora edged away like a tiny Dryad that 
will not be touched. 

“Won’t you say good-night to Mr. Birkin? Go, he’s waiting 
for you,” said Ursula. But the girl-child only made a little 
motion away from him. | 

“Silly Dora, silly Dora!” said Ursula. 

Birkin felt some mistrust and antagonism in the small child. 
He could not understand it. 

“Come then,” said Ursula. “Let us go before mother 
comes.” | 
“Who'll hear us say our prayers?” asked Billy anxiously. 

‘Whom you like.” 

“Won't you?” 

“Yes, I will.” 

“Ursula?” 

“Well, Billy?” 

“Ts it whom you like?” 

“That’s it.” 

“Well, what is whom?” 


SUNDAY EVENING 223 


“Tt’s the accusative of who.” - 
There was a moment’s contemplative silence, then the con- 
fiding: 


“Ts it?” 

Birkin smiled to himself as he sat by the fire. When Ur- 
sula came down he sat motionless, with his arms on his knees. 
She saw him, how he was motionless and ageless, like some 
crouching idol, some image of a deathly religion. He looked 
round at her, and his face, very pale and unreal, seemed to 
gleam with a whiteness almost phosphorescent. 

“Don’t you feel well?” she asked, in indefinable repulsion. 

“TY hadn’t thought about it.” 

“But don’t you know without thinking about it?” 

He looked at her, his eyes dark and swift, and he saw her 
revulsion. He did not answer her question. 

“Don’t you know whether you are unwell or not, without 
thinking about it?” she persisted. 

“Not always,” he said coldly. 

“But don’t you think that’s very wicked?” 

“Wicked?” 

“Ves. I think it’s criminal to have so little connection with 
your own body that you don’t even know when yeu are ill.” 

He looked at her darkly. 

“Ves,” he said. 

“Why don’t you stay in bed when you are seedy? You 
look perfectly ghastly.” 

“Offensively so?” he asked ironically. 

“Yes, quite offensive. Quite repelling.” 

“Ah!! Well, that’s unfortunate.” 

“And it’s raining, and it’s a horrible night. Really, you 
shouldn’t be forgiven for treating your body like that—you 
ought to suffer, a man who takes as little notice of his body 
as that.” 

“. takes as little notice of his body as that,” he echoed 
mechanically. 

This cut her short, and there was silence. 

The others came in from church, and the two had the girls 


224 WOMEN IN LOVE 


to face, then the mother and Gudrun, and then the father and 
the boy. 

“Good-evening,” said Brangwen, faintly surprised. ‘Came 
to see me, did you?” 

“No,” said Birkin, “not about anything in particular, that 
is. The day was dismal, and I thought you wouldn’t mind 
if I called in.” 

“It has been a depressing day,” said Mrs. Brangwen sym- 
pathetically. At that moment the voices of the children were 
heard calling from upstairs: “Mother! Mother!” She lifted 
her face and answered mildly into the distance: “I shall come 
up to you in a minute, Doysie.” Then to Birkin: “There is 
nothing fresh at Shortlands, I suppose? Ah,” she sighed, ‘no, 
poor things, I should think not.” 

“You’ve been over there to-day, I suppose?” asked the 
father. 

“Gerald came round to tea with me, and I walked back 
with him. The house is overexcited and unwholesome, I 
thought.” 

“T should think they were people who hadn’t much restraint,” 
said Gudrun. 

“Or too much,” Birkin answered. 

“Oh yes, I’m sure,” said Gudrun, almost vindictively, “one 
or the other.” 

“They all feel they ought to behave in some unnatural 
fashion,” said Birkin. “When people are in grief, they would 
do better to cover their faces and keep in retirement, as in the 
old days.” 

“Certainly!” cried Gudrun, flushed and inflammable. 
“What can be worse than this public grief—what is more hor- 
rible, more false! If grief is not private, and hidden, what is?” 

“Exactly,” he said. “I felt ashamed when I was there and 
they were all going about in a lugubrious false way, feeling 
they must not be natural or ordinary.” 

“Well—” said Mrs. Brangwen, offended at this criticism, 
“it isn’t so easy to bear a trouble like that.” 

And she went upstairs to the children. 

He remained only a few minutes longer, then took his leave. 


aes eee a 


SUNDAY EVENING 225 


When he was gone Ursula felt such a poignant hatred of him, 
that all her brain seemed turned into a sharp crystal of fine 
hatred. Her whole nature seemed sharpened and intensified 
into a pure dart of hate. She could not imagine what it was. 
It merely took hold of her, the most poignant and ultimate 
hatred, pure and clear and beyond thought. She could not 
think of it at all, she was translated beyond herself. It was like 
a possession. She felt she was possessed. And for several days 
she went about possessed by this exquisite force of hatred 
against him. It surpassed anything she had ever known be- 
fore, it seemed to throw her out of the world into some terrible 
region where nothing of her old life held good. She was quite 
lost and dazed, really dead to her own life. 

It was so completely incomprehensible and irrational. She 
did not know why she hated him, her hate was quite abstract. 
She had only realised with a shock that stunned her, that she 
was overcome by this pure transportation. He was the enemy, 
fine as a diamond, and as hard and jewel-like, the quintessence 
of all that was inimical. 

She thought of his face, white and purely wrought, and of 


his eyes that had such a dark, constant will of assertion, and 


she touched her own forehead, to feel if she were mad, she was 
so transfigured in white flame of essential hate. 

It was not temporal, her hatred, she did not hate him for 
this or for that; she did not want to do anything to him, to 
have any connection with him. Her relation was ultimate and 
utterly beyond words, the hate was so pure and gem-like. It 
was as if he were a beam of essential enmity, a beam of light 


_ that did not only destroy her, but denied her altogether, re- 


voked her whole world. She saw him as a clear stroke of 


_ uttermost contradiction, a strange gem-like being whose exist- 
_ ence defined her own non-existence. When she heard he was 


ill again, her hatred only intensified itself a few degrees, if 


_ that were possible. It stunned her and annihilated her, but 


she could not escape it. She could not escape this transfigura- 


_ tion of hatred that had come upon her. 


CHAPTER XVI 
MAN TO MAN 


He lay sick and unmoved, in pure opposition to everything. 
He knew how near to breaking was the vessel that held his 
life. He knew also how strong and durable it was. And he 
did not care. Better a thousand times take one’s chance 
with death, than accept a life one did not want. But best of 
all to persist and persist and persist for ever, till one were 
satisfied in life. 

He knew that Ursula was referred back to him. He knew 
his life rested with her. But he would rather not live than 
accept the love she proffered. The old way of love seemed a 
dreadful bondage, a sort of conscription. What it was in him 
he did not know, but the thought of love, marriage, and chil- 
dren, and a life lived together, in the horrible privacy of 
domestic and connubial satisfaction, was repulsive. He wanted 
something clearer, more open, cooler, as it were. The hot 
narrow intimacy between man and wife was abhorrent. The 
way they shut their doors, these married people, and shut 
themselves in to their own exclusive alliance with each other, 
even in love, disgusted him. It was a whole community of 
mistrustful couples insulated in private houses or private 
rooms, always in couples, and no further life, no further im- 
mediate, no disinterested relationship admitted: a kaleidoscope 
of couples, disjoined, separatist, meaningless entities of mar- 
ried couples. True, he hated promiscuity even worse than 
marriage, and a liaison was only another kind of coupling, re- 
actionary from the legal marriage. Reaction was a greater 
bore than action. 

On the whole, he hated sex, it was such a limitation. It was 
sex that turned a man into a broken half of a couple, the 
woman into the other broken half. And he wanted to be single 


in himself, the woman single in herself. He wanted sex to 
226 


ee — * 


/ 
, 


MAN TO MAN 227 


revert to the level of the other appetites, to be regarded as a 
functional process, not as a fulfilment. He believed in sex 
marriage. But beyond this, he wanted a further conjunction, 
where man had being and woman had being, two pure beings, 
each constituting the freedom of the other, balancing each 
other like two poles of one force, like two angels, or two 
demons. | 

He wanted so much to be free, not under the compulsion 
of any need for unification, or tortured by unsatisfied desire. 
Desire and aspiration should find their object without all this 
torture, as now, in a world of plenty of water, simple thirst 
is inconsiderable, satisfied almost unconsciously. And he 
wanted to be with Ursula as free as with himself, single and 
clear and cool, yet balanced, polarised with her. The merging, 
the clutching, the mingling of love was become madly abhor- 
rent to him. 

But it seemed to him, woman was always so horrible and 
clutching, she had such a lust for possession, a greed of self- 
importance in love. She wanted to have, to own, to control, 
to be dominant. Everything must be referred back to her, 
to Woman, the Great Mother of everything, out of whom pro- 
ceeded everything and to whom everything must finally be 
rendered up. 

It filled him with almost insane fury, this calm assump- 
tion of the Magna Mater, that all was hers, because she had 
borne it. Man was hers because she had borne him. A Mater 
Dolorosa, she had borne him, a Magna Mater, she now claimed 
him again, soul and body, sex, meaning, and all. He had a 
horror of the Magna Mater, she was detestable. 

She was on a very high horse again, was woman, the Great 
Mother. Did he not know it in Hermione. Hermione, the 
humble, the subservient, what was she all the while but the 
Mater Dolorosa, in her subservience, claiming with horrible, 
insidious arrogance and female tyranny, her own again, claim- 
ing back the man she had borne in suffering. By her very 
suffering and humility she bound her son with chains, she 
held him her everlasting prisoner, 

And Ursula, Ursula was the same—or the inverse. She too 


228 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was the awful, arrogant queen of life, as if she were a queen 
bee on whom all the rest depended. He saw the yellow flare 
in her eyes, he knew the unthinkable overweening assumption 
of primacy in her. She was unconscious of it herself. She 
was only too ready to knock her head on the ground before a 
man. But this was only when she was so certain of her man, 
that she could worship him as a woman worships her own in- 
fant, with a worship of perfect possession. 

It was intolerable, this possession at the hands of woman. 
Always a man must be considered as the broken-off fragment 
of a woman, and the sex was the still aching scar of the 
laceration. Man must be added on to a woman, before he 
had any real place or wholeness. 

And why? Why should we consider ourselves, men and 
women, as broken fragments of one whole? It is not true. 
We are not broken fragments of one whole. Rather we are 
the singling away into purity and clear being, of things that 
were mixed. Rather the sex is that which remains in us of 
the mixed, the unresolved. And passion is the further sepa- 
rating of this mixture, that which is manly being taken into 
the being of the man, that which is womanly passing to the 
woman, till the two are clear and whole. as angels, the admix- 
ture of sex in the highest sense surpassed, leaving two single 
beings constellated together like two stars. 

In the old age, before sex was, we were mixed, each one a 
mixture. The process of singling into individuality resulted 
into the great polarisation of sex. The womanly drew to one 
side, the manly to the other. But the separation was imper- 
fect even then. And so our world-cycle passes. There is now 
to come the new day, when we are beings each of us, fulfilled 
in difference. The man is pure man, the woman pure woman, 
they are perfectly polarised. But there is no longer any of 
the horrible merging, mingling self-abnegation of love. There 
is only the pure duality of polarisation, each one free from 
any contamination of the other. In each, the individual is 
primal, sex is subordinate, but perfectly polarised. Each has 
a single, separate being, with its own laws. The man has his 
pure freedom, the woman hers. Each acknowledges the per- 


MAN TO MAN 229 


fection of the polarised sex-circuit. Each admits the different 
nature in the other. 

So Birkin meditated whilst he was ill. He liked sometimes 
to be ill enough to take to his bed. For then he got better 
very quickly, and things came to him clear and sure. 

Whilst he was laid up, Gerald came to see him. The two 
men had a deep, uneasy feeling for each other. Gerald’s eyes 
were quick and restless, his whole manner tense and impatient, 
he seemed strung up to some activity. According to conven- 
tionality, he wore black clothes, he looked formal, handsome 
and comme il faut. His hair was fair almost to whiteness, 
sharp like splinters of light, his face was keen and ruddy, his 
body seemed full of northern energy. 

Gerald really loved Birkin, though he never quite believed 
in him. Birkin was too unreal;—clever, whimsical, wonder- 
ful, but not practical enough. Gerald felt that his own under- 
standing was much sounder and safer. Birkin was delightful, 
a wonderful spirit, but after all, not to be taken seriously, not 
quite to be counted as a man among men. 

“Why are you laid up again?” he asked kindly, taking the 
sick man’s hand. It was always Gerald who was protective, 
offering the warm shelter of his physical strength. 

| “For my sins, I suppose,” Birkin said, smiling a little iron- 
ically. 
“For your sins? Yes, probably that is so. You should sin 
less, and keep better in health.” 
“Vou’d better teach me.” 
_ He looked at Gerald with ironic eyes. 
, “How are things with you?” asked Birkin. 
“With me?” Gerald looked at Birkin, saw he was serious, 
_ and a warm light came into his eyes. | 
| “TJ don’t know that they’re any different. I don’t see how 
_ they could be. There’s nothing to change.” 
_ “T suppose you are conducting the business as successfully 
as ever, and ignoring the demand of the soul.” 
“That’s it,” said Gerald. “At least as far as the business 
_ is concerned. I couldn’t say about the soul, I’m sure.” 
“No.” 


230 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Surely you don’t expect me to?” laughed Gerald. 

“No. How are the rest of your affairs progressing, apart 
from the business?” 

“The rest of my affairs? What are those? I couldn’t say; 
I don’t know what you refer to.” 

“Yes, you do,” said Birkin. “Are you gloomy or cheerful? 
And what about Gudrun Brangwen?” 

“What about her?” <A confused look came over Gerald. 
“Well,” he added, “I don’t know. I can only tell you she 
gave me a hit over the face last time I saw her.” 

“A hit over the face? What for?” 

“That I couldn’t tell you, either.” 

“Really! But when?” 

-“The night of the party—when Diana was drowned. She 
was driving the cattle up the hill, and I went after her—you 
remember.” | ia | 

“Yes, I remember. But what made her do that? You 
didn’t definitely ask her for it, I suppose?” 

“T? No, not that I know of. I merely said to her, that 
it was dangerous to drive those Highland bullocks—as it is. 
She turned in such a way, and said— ‘I suppose you think I’m 
afraid of you and your cattle, don’t your’ So I asked her 
‘why,’ and for answer she flung me a back-hander across 
the face.” | 

Birkin laughed quickly, as if it pleased him. Gerald looked 
at him, wondering, and began to laugh as well, saying: 

“I didn’t laugh at the time, I assure you. I was never so 
taken aback in my life.” | 

“And weren’t you furious?” 

“Furious? I should think I was. I’d have murdered her 
for two pins.” 

“Fm!” ejaculated Birkin. ‘Poor Gudrun, wouldn’t she 
suffer afterwards for having given herself away!” He was 
hugely delighted. 

“Would she suffer?” asked Gerald, also emused now. 

Both men smiled in malice and amusement. 

“Badly, I should think; seeing how self-conscious she is.” 

‘She is self-conscious, is she? Then what made her do it? 


MAN TO MAN 231 


For I certainly think it was quite uncalled-for, and quite 
unjustified.” 

“T suppose it was a sudden impulse.” 

“Yes, but how do you account for her having such an 
impulse? I’d done her no harm.” 

Birkin shook his head. 

“The Amazon suddenly came up in her, I suppose,” he said. 

“Well,” replied Gerald, “I’d rather it had been the Orinoco.” 

They both laughed lightly at the poor joke. Gerald was 
thinking how Gudrun had said she would strike the last blow 
too. But some reserve made him keep this back from Birkin. 

“And you resent it?” Birkin asked. 

“T don’t resent it. I don’t care a tinker’s curse about it.” 
He was silent a moment, then he added, laughing, “No, I'll 
see it through, that’s all. She seemed sorry afterwards.” 

“Did she? You’ve not met since that night?” 

Gerald’s face clouded. 

“No,” he said. “We’ve been—you can imagine how it’s 
been, since the accident.” 

“Yes. Is it calming down?” 

“T don’t know. It’s a shock, of course. But I don’t believe 
mother minds. I really don’t believe she takes any notice. 
And what’s so funny, she used to be all for the children— 
nothing mattered, nothing whatever mattered but the children. 
And now, she doesn’t take any more notice than if it was 
one of the servants.” 

“No? Did it upset you very much?” 

“It’s a shock. But I don’t feel it very much, really. I 
don’t feel any different. We’ve all got to die, and it doesn’t 
seem to make any great difference, anyhow, whether you die 
or not. I can’t feel any grief, you know. It leaves me cold. 
I can’t quite account for it.” 

“You don’t care if you die or not?” asked Birkin. 

Gerald looked at him with eyes blue as the blue-fibred steel 
of a weapon. He felt awkward, but indifferent. As a matter 
of fact, he did care terribly, with a great fear. 

“Oh,” he said, “I don’t want to die, why should I? But 
I never trouble. The question doesn’t seem to be on the 


232 WOMEN IN LOVE 


carpet for me at all. It doesn’t interest me, you know.” 

“Timor mortis conturbat me,” quoted Birkin, adding—‘“No, 
death doesn’t really seem the point any more. It curiously 
doesn’t concern one. It’s like an ordinary to-morrow.” 

Gerald looked closely at his friend. The eyes of the two 
men met, and an unspoken understanding was exchanged. 

Gerald narrowed his eyes, his face was cool and unscrupulous 
as he looked at Birkin, impersonally, with a vision that ended 
in a point in space, strangely keen-eyed and yet blind. 

“Tf death isn’t the point,” he said, in a strangely abstract, 
cold, fine voice— “what is?” He sounded as if he had been 
found out. 

“What is?” re-echoed Birkin. And there was a ee 
silence. 

“There’s a long way to go, after the point of intrinsic death, 
before we disappear,” said Birkin. 

“There is,” said Gerald. “But what sort of way?” He 
seemed to press the other man for knowledge which he himself 
knew far better than Birkin did. 

“Right down the slopes of degeneration—mystic, universal 
degeneration. There are many stages of pure degradation to 
go through: agelong. We live on long after our death and 
progressively, in progressive devolution.” 

Gerald listened with a faint, fine smile on his face, all the 
time, as if, somewhere, he knew so much better than Birkin, 
all about this: as if his own knowledge were direct and persedial. 
whereas Birkin’s was a matter of observation and inference, 
not quite hitting the nail on the head:—though aiming near 
enough at it. But he was not going to give himself away. 
If Birkin could get at the secrets, let him. Gerald would 
never help him. Gerald would be a dark horse to the end. 

“Of course,” he said, with a startling change of conversa- 
tion, “it is father who really feels it. It will finish him. For 
him the world collapses. All his care now is for Winnie— 
he must save Winnie. He says she ought to be sent away to 
school, but she won’t hear of it, and he'll never do it. Of 
course she is in rather a queer way. We're all of us curiously 


MAN TO MAN 233 


bad at living. We can do things—but we can’t get on with 
life at all. It’s curious—a family failing.” 

“She oughtn’t to be sent away to school,” said Birkin, who - 
was considering a new proposition. 

“She oughtn’t? Why?” 

“She’s a queer child—a special child, more special even than 
you. And in my opinion special children should never be 
sent away to school. Only moderately ordinary children should 
be sent to school—so it seems to me.” 

“T’m inclined to think just the opposite. I think it would 
probably make her more normal if she went away and mixed 
with other children.” 

“She wouldn’t mix, you see. You never really mixed, did 
you? And she wouldn’t be willing even to pretend to. She’s 
proud, and solitary, and naturally apart. If she has a single 
nature, why do you want to make her gregarious?” 

“No, I don’t want to make her anything. But I think 
school would be good for her.” 

“Was it good for you?” 

Gerald’s eyes narrowed uglily. School had been torture 
to him. Yet he had not questioned whether one should go 
through this torture. He seemed to believe in education 
through subjection and torment. 

“T hated it at the time, but I can see it was necessary,” he 
said. “It brought me into line a bit—and you can’t live unless 
you do come into line somewhere.” 

“Well,” said Birkin, “I begin to think that you can’t live 


; unless you keep entirely out of the line. It’s no good trying 


to toe the line, when your one impulse is to smash up the line. 
Winnie is a special nature, and for special natures you must 
give a special world.” 

“Yes, but where’s your special world?” said Gerald. 

“Make it. Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the 
world, chop the world down to fit yourself. As a matter of 
fact, two exceptional people make another world. You and 
I, we make another, separate world. You don’t want a world 
same as your brothers-in-law. It’s just the special quality you 
value. Do you want to be normal or ordinary? It’s a lie. 


234 WOMEN IN LOVE 


You want to be free and extraordinary, in an extraordinary 
world of liberty.” 

Gerald looked at Birkin with subtle eyes of knowledge. 
But he would never openly admit what he felt. He knew 
more than Birkin, in one direction—-much more. And this 
gave him his gentle love for the other man, as if Birkin were 
in some way young, innocent, child-like: so amazingly clever, - 
but incurably innocent. 

“Yet you are so banal as to consider me chiefly a freak,” 
said Birkin pointedly. 

“A freak!” exclaimed Gerald, startled. And his face opened 
suddenly, as if lighted with simplicity, as when a flower opens 
out of the cunning bud. “No—I never consider you a freak.” 
And he watched the other man with strange eyes, that Birkin 
could not understand. “TI feel,” Gerald continued, “that there 
is always an element of uncertainty about you—perhaps you 
are uncertain about yourself. But I’m never sure of you. You 
can go away and change as easily as if you had no soul.” 

He looked at Birkin with penetrating eyes. Birkin was 
amazed. He thought he had all the soul in the world. He 
stared in amazement. And Gerald, watching, saw the amazing 
attractive goodliness of his eyes, a young, spontaneous good- 
ness that attracted the other man infinitely, yet filled him with 
bitter chagrin, because he mistrusted it so much. He knew 
Birkin could do without him—could forget, and not suffer. 
This was always present in Gerald’s consciousness, filling him 
with bitter unbelief: this consciousness of the young, animal- 
like spontaneity of detachment. It seemed almost like hypoc- 
risy and lying, sometimes, oh, often, on Birkin’s part, to talk 
so deeply and importantly. | 

Quite other things were going through Birkin’s mind. Sud- 
denly he saw himself confronted with another problem—the 
problem of love and eternal conjunction between two men. 
Of course this was necessary—it had been a necessity inside 
himself all his life—to love a man purely and fully. Of course © 
he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along denying it. 

He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside 
him, lost in brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts. 


Cae ee a ee SS LS aL Ul slg 


es 


ae 


ee eee. Se ee ee 


MAN TO MAN: 235 


“You know how the old German knights used to swear a 
Blutbruderschaft,” he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy 
activity in his eyes. 

“Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other’s 
blood into the cut?” said Gerald. 

“VYes—and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, 
all their lives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, 
that is obsolete. But we ought to swear to love each other, 
you and I, implicitly, and perfectly, finally, without any possi- 
bility of going back on it.” 

He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. 
Gerald looked down at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in 
fascinated attraction, that he was mistrustful, resenting the 
bondage, hating the attraction. 

“We will swear to each other, one day, shall we?” pleaded 
Birkin. ‘We will swear to stand by each other—be true to 
each other—ultimately—infallibly—given to each other, organ- 
ically—without possibility of taking back.” 

Birkin sought hard to express himself. But Gerald hardly 
listened. His face shone with a certain luminous pleasure. 
He was pleased. But he kept his reserve. He held himself 
back. 

“Shall we swear to each other, one day?” said Birkin, put- 
ting out his hand towards Gerald. 

Gerald just touched the extended fine, living hand, as if 
withheld and afraid. 

“We'll leave it till I understand it better,” he said, in a 
voice of excuse. 

Birkin watched him. A little sharp disappointment, perhaps 
a touch of contempt came into his heart. 

“Yes,” he said. “You must tell me what you think, later. 
You know what I mean? Not sloppy emotionalism. An 
impersonal union that leaves one free.” 

They lapsed both into silence. Birkin was looking at Gerald 
all the time. He seemed now to see, not the physical, animal 
man, which he usually saw in Gerald, and which usually he 

liked so much, but the man himself, complete, and as if fated, 
doomed, limited. This strange sense of fatality in Gerald, as 


236 WOMEN IN LOVE 


if he were limited to one form of existence, one knowledge, 
one activity, a sort of fatal halfness, which to himself seemed 
wholeness, always overcame Birkin after their moments of 
passionate approach, and filled him with a sort of contempt, 
or boredom. It was the insistence on the limitation which so 
bored Birkin in Gerald. Gerald could never fly away from 
himself, in real indifferent gaiety. He had a clog, a sort of 
monomania. 

There was silence for a time. Then Birkin said, in a lighter 
' tone, letting the stress of the contact pass: 

“Can’t you get a good governess for Winifred?—somebody 
exceptional?” | 

“Hermione Roddice'suggested we should ask Gudrun to 
teach her to draw and to model in clay. You know Winnie 
is astonishingly clever with that plasticine stuff. Hermione de- 
clares she is an artist.” Gerald spoke in the usual animated, 
chatty manner, as if nothing unusual had passed. But Bir- 
kin’s manner was full of reminder. 3 

“Really! I didn’t know that. Oh well then, if Gudrun 
would teach her, it would be perfect—couldn’t be anything 
better—if Winifred is an artist. Because Gudrun somewhere 
is one. And every true artist is the salvation of every other.” 

“T thought they got on so badly, as a rule.” 

“Perhaps. But only artists produce for each other the world 
that is fit to live in. If you can arrange that for Winifred, 
it is perfect.” 

“But you think she wouldn’t come?” 

“Tt don’t know. Gudrun is rather self-opinionated. She 
won’t go cheap anywhere. Or if she does, she'll pretty soon 
take herself back. So whether she would condescend to do 
private teaching, particularly here, in Beldover, I don’t know. 
But it would be just the thing. Winifred has got a special 
‘nature. And if you can put into her way the means of being 
self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She’ll never get 
on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself, 
and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to 
think what her life will be like unless she does find a means 
of expression, some way of fulfilment. You can see what 


MAN TO MAN 237 


mere leaving it to fate brings. You can see how much 
marriage is to be trusted to—look at your own mother.” 

“Do you think mother is abnormal?” 

“No! I think she only wanted something more, or other 
than the common run of life. And not getting it, she has 
gone wrong perhaps.” 

“After producing a brood of wrong children,” said Gerald 
gloomily. 

“No more wrong than any of the rest of us,” Birkin replied. 
“The most normal people have the worst subterranean selves, 
take them one by one.” 

“Sometimes I think it is a curse to be alive,” said Gerald, 
with sudden impotent anger. 

“Well,” said Birkin, “why not? Let it be a curse some- 
times to be alive—at other times it is anything but a curse. 
You’ve got plenty of zest in it really.” 

“Less than you’d think,” said Gerald, revealing a strange 
poverty in his look at the other man. _ 

There was silence, each thinking his own thoughts. 

“T don’t see what she has to distinguish between teaching 
at the Grammar School, and coming to teach Win,” said Gerald. 

“The difference between a public servant and a private one. 
The only nobleman to-day, king and only aristocrat, is the 
public, the public. You are quite willing to serve the public— 
but to be a private tutor—” 

“T don’t want to serve either—” 

“No! And Gudrun will probably feel the same.” 

Gerald thought for a few minutes. Then he said: 

“At all events, father won’t make her feel like a private 
servant. He will be fussy and grateful enough.” 

“So he ought. And so ought all of you. Do you think you 
can hire a woman like Gudrun Brangwen with money? She 
is your equal like anything—probably your superior.” 

“Is she?” said Gerald. 

“Yes, and if you haven’t the guts to know it, I hope she'll 
leave you to your own devices.” 

“Nevertheless,” said Gerald, “if she is my equal, I wish she 


238 WOMEN IN LOVE 


weren't a teacher, because I don’t think teachers as a rule 
are my equal.” 

“Nor do I, damn them. But am I a teacher because I teach, 
or a parson because I preach?” 

Gerald laughed. He was always uneasy on this score. He 
did not want to claim social superiority, yet he would not 
claim intrinsic personal superiority, because he would never 
base his standard of values on pure being. So he wobbled 
upon a iacit assumption of social standing. Now Birkin 
wanted him to accept the fact of intrinsic difference between 
human beings, which he did not intend to accept. It was 
against his social honour, his principle. He rose to go. 

“I’ve been neglecting my business all this while,” he said 
smiling. 

“I ought to have reminded you before,” Birkin replied, 
laughing and mocking. 

“I knew you’d say something like that,” laughed Gerald, 
rather uneasily. 

“Did you?” 

“Yes, Rupert. It wouldn’t do for us all to be like you 
are—we should soon be in the cart. When I am above the 
world, I shall ignore all businesses.” 

“Of course, we’re not in the cart now,” said Birkin, satir- 
ically. 

“Not as much as you make out. At any rate, we have 
enough to eat and drink—” 

“And be satisfied,” added Birkin. 

Gerald came near the bed and stood looking down at Birkin 
whose throat was exposed, whose tossed hair fell attractively 
on the warm brow, above the eyes that were so unchallenged 
and still im the satirical face. Gerald, full-limbed and turgid 
with energy, stood unwilling to go, he was held by the pres- 
ence of the other man. He had not the power to go away. 

“So,” said Birkin. “Good-bye.” And he reached out his 
hand from under the bed-clothes, smiling with a glimmering 
look. 

“Good-bye,” said Gerald, taking the warm hand of his 


MAN TO MAN 239 


friend in a firm grasp. “I shall come again. I miss you down 
-at the mill.” 

“T’ll be there in a few days,” said Birkin. 

The eyes of the two men met again. Gerald’s, that were 
keen as a hawk’s, were suffused now with warm light, and 
with unadmitted love, Birkin looked back as out of a darkness, 
unsounded and unknown, yet with a kind of warmth, that 
seemed to flow over Gerald’s brain like a fertile sleep. 

“Good-bye then. There’s nothing I can do for you?” 

“Nothing, thanks.” 

Birkin watched the black-clothed form of the other man 
move out of the door, the bright head was gone, he turned 
over to sleep. 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 


In Beldover, there was both for Ursula and for Gudrun an 
interval. It seemed to Ursula as if Birkin had gone out of 
her for the time, he had lost his significance, he scarcely mat- 
tered in her world. She had her own friends, her own activi- 
ties, her own life. She turned back to the old ways with zest, 
away from him. 

And Gudrun, after feeling every moment in all her veins 
conscious of Gerald Crich, connected even physically with 
him, was now almost indifferent to the thought of him. She 
was nursing new schemes for going away and trying a new 
form of life. All the time, there was something in her urging 
her to avoid the final establishing of a relationship with Gerald. 
She felt it would be wiser and better to have no more than a 
casual acquaintance with him. 

She had a scheme for going to St. Petersburg, where she 
had a friend who was a sculptor like herself, arid who lived 
with a wealthy Russian whose hobby was jewel-making. The 
emotional, rather rootless life of the Russians appealed to her. 
She did not want to go to Paris. Paris was dry, and essen- 
tially boring. She would like to go to Rome, Munich, Vienna, 
or to St. Petersburg or Moscow. She had a friend in St. 
Petersburg and a friend in Munich. To each of these she 
wrote, asking about rooms. 

She had a certain amount of money. She had come home 
partly to save, and now she had sold several pieces of work, 
she had been praised in various shows. She knew she could 
become quite the “go” if she went to London. But she knew 
London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, 
of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as 
soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of 
her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless. 

240 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 241 


The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green 
to buy honey. Mrs. Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, 
sly, honied, with something shrewish and cat-like beneath, 
asked the girls into her too-cosy, too-tidy kitchen. There was 
a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere. 

“Yes, Miss Brangwen,” she said, in her slightly whining, 
insinuating voice, “and how do you like being back in the old 
place, then?” 

Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once. 

“I don’t care for it,” she replied abruptly. 

“You don’t? Ay, well, I suppose you found a difference 
from London. You like life, and big, grand places. Some of 
us has to be content with Willey Green and Beldover. And 
what do you think of our Grammar School, as there’s so much 
talk about?” 

“What do I think of it?” Gudrun looked round at her 
slowly. “Do you mean, do I think it’s a good school?” 

“Yes. What is your opinion of it?” 

“T do think it’s a good school.” 

Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common 
people hated the school. , 

“Ay, you do, then! I’ve heard so much, one way and the 
other. It’s nice to know what those that’s in it feel. But 
opinions vary, don’t they? Mr. Crich up at Highclose is all 
for it. Ay, poor man, I’m afraid he’s not long for this world. 
He’s very poorly.” 

“Ts he worse?” asked Ursula. 

“Eh, yes—since they lost Miss Diana. He’s gone off to a 
shadow. Poor man, he’s had a world of trouble.” 

“Has he?” asked Gudrun, faintly ironic. 

“He has, a world of trouble. And as nice and kind a gentle- 
man as ever you could wish to meet. His children don’t take 
after him.” 

“TI suppose they take after their mother?” said Ursula. 

“In many ways.” Mrs. Kirk lowered her voice a little. 
“She was a proud, haughty lady when she came into these 
parts—my word, she was that! She mustn’t be looked at, 


242 WOMEN IN LOVE 


and it was worth your life to speak to her.” The woman made 
a dry, sly face. 

“Did you know her when she was first married?” 

‘Ves, I knew her. I nursed three of her children. And 
proper little terrors they were, little fiends—that Gerald was 
a demon if ever there was one, a proper demon, ay, at six 
months old.” A curious malicious, sly tone came into the 
woman’s voice. | 

“Really,” said Gudrun. 

“That wilful, masterful—he’d mastered one nurse at six 
months. Kick, and scream, and struggle like a demon. Many’s 
the time I’ve pinched his little bottom for him, when he was 
a child in arms. Ay, and he’d have been better if he’d had it 
pinched oftener. But she wouldn’t have them corrected—no-o, 
wouldn’t hear of it. I can remember the rows she had with 
Mr. Crich, my word. When he’d got worked up, properly 
worked up till he could stand no more, he’d lock the study door 
and whip them. But she paced up and down all the while 
like a tiger outside, like a tiger, with very murder in her face. 
She had a face that could look death. And when the door 
was opened, she’d go in with her hands lifted— ‘What have 
you been doing to my children, you coward?’ She was like 
one out of her mind. I believe he was frightened of her; he 
had to be driven mad before he’d lift a finger. Didn’t the 
servants have a life of it! And didn’t we used to be thankful 
when one of them caught it. They were the torment of your 
life.” 

“Really!” said Gudrun. 

“In every possible way. If you wouldn’t let them smash 
their pots on the table, if you wouldn’t let them drag the 
kitten about with a string round its neck, if you wouldn’t 
give them whatever they asked for, every mortal thing—then 
there was a shine on, and their mother coming in asking— 
‘What’s the matter with him? What have you done to him? 
What is it, Darling?’ And then she’d turn on you as if she’d 
trample you under her feet. But she didn’t trample on me. 
I was the only one that could do anything with her demons— 
for she wasn’t going to be bothered with them herself. No, 


a ee a 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 243 


she took no trouble for them. But they must just have their 
way, they mustn’t be spoken to. And Master Gerald was the 
beauty. I felt when he was a year and a half, I could stand 
no more. But I pinched his little bottom for him when he 
was in arms, I did, when there was no holding him, and I’m 
not sorry I did—” 

Gudrun went away in fury and loathing. The phrase, ‘I 
pinched his little bottom for him,’ sent her into a white, stony 
fury. She could not bear it, she wanted to have the woman 
taken out at once and strangled. And yet there the phrase was 
lodged in her mind for ever, beyond escape. She felt, one day, 
she would dave to tell him, to see how he took it. And she 
loathed herself for the thought. 

But at Shortlands the life-long struggle was coming to a 
close. The father was ill and was going to die. He had bad 
internal pains, which took away all his attentive life, and left 
him with only a vestige of his consciousness. More and more 
a silence came over him, he was less and less acutely aware of 
his surroundings. The pain seemed to absorb his activity. 
He knew it was there, he knew it would come again. It was 
like something lurking in the darkness within him. And he 
had not the power, or the will, to seek it out and to know it. 
There it remained in the darkness, the great pain, tearing him 
at times, and then being silent. And when it tore him he 
crouched in silent subjection under it, and when it left him 
alone again, he refused to know of it. It was within the dark- 
ness, let it remain unknown. So he never admitted it, except 
in a secret corner of himself, where all his never-revealed fears 
and secrets were accumulated. For the rest, he had a pain, 
it went away, it made no difference. It even stimulated him, 
excited him. 

But it gradually absorbed his life. Gradually it drew away 
all his potentiality, it bled him into the dark, it weaned him 
of life and drew him away into the darkness. And in this 
twilight of his life little remained visible to him. The busi- 
ness, his work, that was gone entirely. His public interests 
had disappeared as if they had never been. Even his family 
had become extraneous to him, he could only remember, in 


244 WOMEN IN LOVE 


some slight non-essential part of himself, that such and such 
were his children. But it was historical fact, not vital to him. 
He had to make an effort to know their relation to him. Even 
his wife barely existed. She indeed was like the darkness, like 
the pain within him. By some strange association, the dark- 
ness that contained the pain and the darkness that contained 
his wife were identical. All his thoughts and understandings 
became blurred and fused, and now his wife and the consum- 
ing pain were the same dark secret power against him, that 
he never faced. He never drove the dread out of its lair within 
him. He only knew that there was a dark place, and some- 
thing inhabiting this darkness which issued from time to time 
and rent him. But he dared not penetrate and drive the beast 
into the open. He had rather ignore its existence. Only, in 
his vague way, the dread was his wife, the destroyer, and it 
was the pain, the destruction, a darkness which was one and 
both. 

He very rarely saw his wife. She kept her room. - Only 
occasionally she came forth, with her head stretched forward, 
and in her low, possessed voice, she asked him how he was. 
And he answered her, in the habit of more than thirty years: 
“Well, I don’t think I’m any the worse, dear.” But he was 
frightened of her, underneath this safeguard of habit, fright- 
ened almost to the verge of death. | 

But all his life, he had been so constant to his lights, he had 
never broken down. He would die even now without breaking 
down, without knowing what his feelings were, towards her. 
All his life, he had said: “Poor Christiana, she has such a strong 
temper.” With unbroken will, he had stood by this position 
with regard to her, he had substituted pity for all his hostility, 
pity had been his shield and his safeguard, and his infallible 
weapon. And still, in his consciousness, he was sorry for her, 
her nature was so violent and so impatient. 

But now his pity, with his life, was wearing thin, and the 
dread almost amounting to horror, was rising into being. But 
before the armour of his pity really broke, he would die, as an 
insect when its shell is cracked. This was his final resource. 
Others would live on, and know the living death, the ensuing 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 245 


process of hopeless chaos. He would not. He denied death its 
victory. 

He had been so constant to his lights, so constant to charity, 
and to his love for his neighbour. Perhaps he had loved his 
neighbour even better than himself—which is going one fur- 
ther than the commandment. Always, this flame had burned in 
his heart, sustaining him through everything, the welfare of 
the people. He was a large employer of labour, he was a 
great mine-owner. And he had never lost this from his heart, 
that in Christ he was one with his workmen. Nay, he had felt 
inferior to them, as if.:they through poverty and labour were 
nearer to God than he. He had always the unacknowledged 
belief, that it was his workmen, the miners, who held in their 
hands the means of salvation. To move nearer to God, he 
must move towards his miners, his life must gravitate towards 
theirs. They were, unconsciously, his idol, his God made 
manifest. In them he worshipped the highest, the great, sym- 
pathetic, mindless Godhead of humanity. 

And all the while, his wife had opposed him like one of 
the great demons of hell. Strange, like a bird of prey, with 
the fascinating beauty and abstraction of a hawk, she had 
beat against the bars of his philanthropy, and like a hawk 
in a cage, she had sunk into silence. By force of circumstance, 
because all the world combined to make the cage unbreakable, 
he had been too strong for her, he had kept her prisoner. 
And because she was his prisoner, his passion for her had 
always remained keen as death. He had always loved her, 
loved her with intensity. Within the cage, she was denied 
nothing, she was given all licence. 

But she had gone almost mad. Of wild and overweening 
temper, she could not bear the humiliation of her husband’s 
soft, half-appealing kindness to everybody. He was not de- 
ceived by the poor. He knew they came and sponged on him, 
and whined to him, the worst sort; the majority, luckily for 
him, were much too proud to ask for anything, much too inde- 
pendent to come knocking at his door. But in Beldover, as 
everywhere else, there were the whining, parasitic, foul human 
beings who come crawling after charity, and feeding on the 


246 WOMEN IN LOVE 


living body of the public like lice. A kind of fire would go 
over Christiana Crich’s brain, as she saw two more pale-faced, 
creeping womer. in objectionable black clothes, cringing lugu- 
briously up the drive to the door. She wanted to set the dogs 
on them, “Hi Rip! Hi Ring! Ranger! At ’em boys, set ’em 
off.” But Crowther, the butler, with all the rest of the servants, 
was Mr. Crich’s man. Nevertheless, when her husband was 
away, she would come down like a wolf on the crawling suppli- 
cants: “What do you people want? There is nothing for you 
here. You have no business on the drive at all. Simpson, 
drive them away and let no more of them through the gate.” 

The servants had to obey her. And she would stand watch- 
ing with an eye like the eagle’s, whilst the groom in clumsy 
confusion drove the lugubrious persons down the drive, as if 
they were rusty fowls, scuttling before him. 

But they learned to know, from the lodge-keeper, when Mr. 
Crich was away, and they timed their visits. How many 
times, in the first years, would Crowther knock softly at the 
door: “Person to see you, sir.” 

“What name?” 

“Grocock, sir.” 

“What do they want?” The question was half impatient, 
half gratified. He liked hearing appeals to his charity. 

“About a child, sir.” 

“Show them into the library, and tell them they shouldn’t 
come after eleven o’clock in the morning.” 

“Why do you get up from dinner?—send them off,” his 
wife would say abruptly. 

“Oh, I can’t do that. It’s no trouble just to hear what 
they have to say.” 

“How many more have been here to-day? Why don’t you 
establish open house for them? They would soon oust me and 
the children.” 

“You know, dear, it doesn’t hurt me to hear what they have 
to say. And if they really are in trouble—well, it is my duty 
to help them out of it.” 

“It’s your duty to invite all the rats in the world to gl 
at your bones.” 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 247 


“Come, Christiana, it isn’t like that. Don’t be uncharitable.” 

But she suddenly swept out of the room, and out to the 
study. There sat the meagre charity-seekers, looking as if they 
were at the doctor’s. 

“Mr. Crich can’t see you. He can’t see you at this hour. 
Do you think he is your property, that you can come when- 
ever you like? You must go away, there is nothing for you 
here.” 

The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr. Crich, pale 
and black-bearded and deprecating, came behind her, saying: 

“Yes, I don’t like you coming as late as this. I'll hear 
any of you in the morning part of the day, but I can’t really 
do with you after. What’s amiss then, Gittens? How is 
your Missis?” 

“Why, she’s sunk very low, Mester Crich, she’s a’most gone, 
she is—” 

Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs. Crich as if her husband were 
some subtle funeral bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. 
It seemed to her he was never satisfied unless there was some 
sordid tale being poured out to him, which he drank in with 
a sort of mournful, sympathetic satisfaction. He would have 
no raison d’étre if there were no lugubrious miseries in the 
world, as an undertaker would have no meaning if there were 
no funerals. 

Mrs. Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away 
from this world of creeping democracy. A band of tight, bale- 
ful exclusion fastened round her heart, her isolation was fierce 
and hard, her antagonism was passive but terribly pure, like. 
that of a hawk in a cage. As the years went on, she lost more 
and more count of the world, she seemed rapt in some glittering 
abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She would wander 
about the house and about the surrounding country, staring 
keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no 
connection with the world. And she did not even think. She 
was consumed in a fierce tension of opposition, like the nega- 
tive pole of a magnet. | 

And she bore many children. For, as time went on, she 
never opposed her husband in word or deed. She took no 


248 WOMEN IN LOVE 


notice of him, externally. She submitted to him, let him 
take what he wanted and do as he wanted with her. She 
was like a hawk that sullenly submits to everything. The 
relation between her and her husband was wordless and un- 
known, but it was deep, awful, a relation of utter interde- 
struction. And he, who triumphed in the world, he became 
more and more hollow in his vitality, the vitality was bled 
from within him, as by some hemorrhage. She was hulked 
like a hawk in a cage, but her heart was fierce and undimin- 
ished within her, though her mind was destroyed. 

So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms 
sometimes, before his strength was all gone. The terrible 
white, destructive light that burned in her eyes only excited 
and roused him. Till he was bled to death, and then he 
dreaded her more than anything. But he always said to him- 
self, how happy he had been, how he had loved her with a 
pure and consuming love ever since he had known her. And 
he thought of her as pure, chaste; the white flame which was 
known to him alone, the flame of her sex, was a white flower 
of snow to his mind. She was a wonderful white snow-flower, 
which he had desired infinitely. And now he was dying with all 
his ideas and interpretations intact. They would only collapse 
when the breath left his body. Till then they would be pure 
truths for him. Only death would show the perfect complete- 
ness of the lie. Till death, she was his white snow-flower. He 
had subdued her, and her subjugation was to him an infinite 
chastity in her, a virginity which he could never break, and 
which dominated him as by a spell. 

She had let go the outer world, but within herself she. was 
unbroken and unimpaired. She only sat in her room like a 
moping, dishevelled hawk, motionless, mindless. Her children, 
for whom she had been so fierce in her youth, now meant 
scarcely anything to her. She had lost all that, she was. 
quite by herself. Only Gerald, the gleaming, had some exist- 
ence for her. But of late years, since he had become head 
of the business, he too was forgotten. Whereas the father, 
now he was dying, turned for compassion to Gerald. There 
had always been opposition between the two of them. Gerald 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 249 


had feared and despised his father, and to a great extent had 
avoided him all through boyhood and young manhood. And 
the father had felt very often a real dislike of his eldest son, 
which, never wanting to give way to, he had refused to 
acknowledge. He had ignored Gerald as much as possible, 
leaving him alone. 

Since, however, Gerald had come home and assumed respon- 
sibility in the firm, and had proved such a wonderful director, 
the father, tired and weary of all outside concerns, had put 
all his trust of these things in his son, implicitly, leaving 
everything to him, and assuming a rather touching dependence 
on the young enemy. This immediately roused a poignant 
pity and allegiance in Gerald’s heart, always shadowed by 
contempt and by unadmitted enmity. For Gerald was in 
reaction against Charity; and yet he was dominated by it, it 
assumed supremacy in the inner life, and he could not con- 
fute it. So he was partly subject to that which his father 
stood for, but he was in reaction against it. Now he could 
not save himself. A certain pity and grief and tenderness for 
his father overcame him, in spite of the deeper, more sullen 
hostility. 

The father won shelter from Gerald through compassion. 
But for love he had Winifred. She was his youngest child, 
she was the only one of his children whom he had ever closely 
loved. And her he loved with all the great, overweening, 
sheltering love of a dying man. He wanted to shelter her 
infinitely, infinitely, to wrap her in warmth and love and 
shelter, perfectly. If he could save her she should never 
know one pain, one grief, one hurt. He had been so right 
all his life, so constant in his kindness and his goodness. And 
this was his last passionate righteousness, his love for the child 
Winifred.. Some things troubled him yet. The world had 
passed away from him, as his strength ebbed. There were no 
more poor and injured and humble to protect and succour. 
These were all lost to him. There were no more sons and 
daughters to trouble him, and to weigh on him as an unnatural 
responsibility. These too had faded out of reality. All these 
things had fallen out of his hands, and'left him free. 


250 WOMEN IN LOVE 


There remained the covert fear and horror of his wife, as 
she sat mindless and strange in her room, or as she came forth 
with slow, prowling step, her head bent forward. But this he 
put away. Even his life-long righteousness, however, would 
not quite deliver him from the inner horror. Still, he could 
keep it sufficiently at bay. It would never break forth openly. 
Death would come first. 

Then there was Winifred! If only he could be sure about 
her, if only he could be sure. Since the death of Diana, and 
the development of his illness, his craving for surety with 
regard to Winifred amounted almost to obsession. It was as 
if, even dying, he must have some anxiety, some responsibility 
of love, of Charity, upon his heart. 

She was an odd, sensitive, inflammable child, having her 
father’s dark hair and quiet bearing, but being quite detached, 
momentaneous. She was like a changeling indeed, as if her 
feelings did not matter to her, really. She often seemed to 
be talking and playing like the gayest and most childish of 
children, she was full of the warmest, most delightful affection 
for a few things—for her father, and for her animals in par- 
ticular. But if she heard that her beloved kitten Leo had been 
run over by the motor-car she put her head on one side, and 
replied, with a faint contraction like resentment on her face: 
“Has he?” Then she took no more notice. She only disliked 
the servant who would force bad news on her, and wanted her 
to be sorry. She wished not to know, and that. seemed her 
chief motive. She avoided her mother, and most of the mem- 
bers of her family. She loved her Daddy, because he wanted 
her always to be happy, and because he seemed to become 
young again, and irresponsible in her presence. She liked 
Gerald, because he was so self-contained. She loved people 
who would make life a game for her. She had an amazing 
instinctive critical faculty, and was a pure anarchist, a pure 
aristocrat at once. For she accepted her equals wherever she 
found them, and she ignored with blithe indifference her infe- 
riors, whether they were her brothers and sisters, or whether 
they were wealthy guests of the house, or whether they were 
the common people or the servants. She was quite single and 


2 eee ee ee ee ee 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 251 


by herself, deriving from nobody. It was as if she were cut 
off from all purposes or continuity, and existed simply moment 
by moment. 

The father, as by some strange final illusion, felt as if all 
his fate depended on his ensuring to Winifred her happiness. 
She who could never suffer, because she never formed vital 
connections, she who could lose the dearest things of her life 
and be just the same the next day, the whole memory dropped 
out, as if deliberately, she whose will was so strangely and 
easily free, anarchistic, almost nihilistic, who like a soulless 
bird flits on its own will, without attachment or responsibility 
beyond the moment, who in her every motion snapped the 
threads of serious relationship with blithe, free hands, really, 
nihilistic, because never troubled, she must be the object of 
her father’s final passionate solicitude. 

When Mr. Crich heard that Gudrun Brangwen might come 
to help Winifred with her drawing and modelling he saw a 
road to salvation for his child. He believed that Winifred 
had talent, he had seen Gudrun, he knew that she was an 
exceptional person. He could give Winifred into her hands 
as into the hands of a right being. Here was a direction and 
a positive force to be lent to his child, he need not leave 
her directionless and defenceless. If he could but graft the 
girl on to some tree of utterance before he died, he would have 
fulfilled his responsibility. And here it could be done. He 
did not hesitate to appeal to Gudrun. 

Meanwhile, as the father drifted more and more out of 
life, Gerald experienced riore and more a sense of exposure. 
His father after all had stood for the living world to him. 
Whilst his father lived Gerald was not responsible for the 
world. But now his father was passing away, Gerald found 
himself left exposed and unready before the storm of living, 
like the mutinous first mate of a ship that has lost his captain, 
and who sees only a terrible chaos in front of him. He did 
not inherit an established order and a living idea. The whole 
unifying idea of mankind seemed to be dying with his father, 
the centralising force that had held the whole together seemed 
to collapse with his father, the parts were ready to go asunder 


252 WOMEN IN LOVE 


in terrible disintegration. Gerald was as if left on board of 
a ship that was going asunder beneath his feet, he was in 
charge of a vessel whose timbers were all coming apart. 

He knew that all his life he had been wrenching at the 
frame of life to break it apart. And now, with something of 
the terror of a destructive child, he saw himself on the point 
of inheriting his own destruction. And during the last months, 
under the influence of death, and of Birkin’s talk, and of 
Gudrun’s penetrating being, he had lost entirely that mechan- 
ical certainty that had been his triumph. Sometimes spasms of 
hatred came over him, against Birkin and Gudrun and that 
whole set. He wanted to go back to the dullest conservatism, 
to the most stupid of conventional people. He wanted to revert 
to the strictest Toryism. But the desire did not last long 
enough to carry him into action. 

During his childhood and his boyhood he had wanted a 
sort of savagedom. The days of Homer were his ideal, when a 
man was chief of an army of heroes, or spent his years in 
wonderful Odyssey. He hated remorselessly the circumstances 
of his own life, so much that he never really saw Beldover 
and the colliery valley. He turned his face entirely away 
from the blackened mining region that stretched away on the 
right hand of Shortlands, he turned entirely to the country 
and the woods beyond Willey Water. It was true that the 
panting and rattling of the coal mines could always be heard 
at Shortlands. But from his earliest childhood, Gerald had 
paid no heed to this. He had ignored the whole of the indus- 
trial sea which surged in coal-blackened tides against the 
grounds of the house. The world was really a wilderness where 
one hunted and swam and rode. He rebelled against all au- 
thority. Life was a condition of savage freedom. 

Then he had been sent away to school, which was so much 
death to him. He refused to go to Oxford, choosing a German 
university. He had spent a certain time at Bonn, at Berlin, 
and at Frankfurt. There, a curiosity had been aroused in 
his mind. He wanted to see and to know, in a curious objec- 
tive fashion, as if it were an amusement to him. Then he 


Pn 2 eee ee ee ee ee eee ee EE ee ee 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 253 


must try war. Then he must travel into the savage regions 
that had so attracted him. 

The result was, he found humanity very much alike every- 
where, and to a mind like his, curious and cold, the savage was 
duller, less exciting than the European. So he took hold of 
all kinds of sociological ideas, and ideas of reform. But they 
never went more than skin-deep, they were never more than a 
mental amusement. Their interest lay chiefly in the reaction 
against the positive order, the destructive reaction. 

He discovered at last a real adventure in the coal-mines. 
His father asked him to help in the firm. Gerald had been 
educated in the science of mining, and it had never interested 
him. Now, suddenly, with a sort of exultation, he laid hold 
of the world. 

There was impressed photographically on his consciousness 
the great industry. Suddenly, it was real, he was part of it. 
Down the valley ran the colliery railway, linking mine with 
mine. Down the railway ran the trains, short trains of 
heavily laden trucks, long trains of empty wagons, each one 
bearing in big white letters the initials: 

re, B. Co.” 

These white letters on all the wagons he had seen since 
his first childhood, and it was as if he had never seen them, 
they were so familiar, and so ignored. Now at last he saw 
his own name written on the wall. Now he had a vision of 
power. 

So many wagons, bearing his initial, running all over the 
country. He saw them as he entered London in the train, he 
saw them at Dover. So far his power ramified. He looked 
at Beldover, at Selby, at Whatmore, at Lethley Bank, the 
great colliery villages which depended entirely on his mines. 
They were hideous and sordid, during his childhood they had 
been sores in his consciousness. And now he saw them with 
pride. Four raw new towns, and many ugly industrial ham- 
lets were crowded under his dependence. He saw the stream 
of miners flowing along the causeways from the mines at the 
end of the afternoon, thousands of blackened, slightly distorted 
human beings with red mouths, all moving subjugate to his 


254 WOMEN IN LOVE 


will. He pushed slowly in his motor-car through the little 
market-top on Friday nights in Beldover, through a solid mass 
of human beings that were making their purchases and doing 
their weekly spending. They were all subordinate to him. 
They were ugly and uncouth, but they were his instruments. 
He was the God of the machine. They made way for his 
motor-car automatically, slowly. 

He did not care whether they made way with alacrity, or 
grudgingly. He did not care what they thought of him. His 
vision had suddenly crystallised. Suddenly he had conceived 
the pure instrumentality of mankind. There had been so 
much humanitarianism, so much talk of sufferings and feel- 
ings. It was ridiculous. The sufferings and feelings of indi- 
viduals did not matter in the least. They were mere condi- — 
tions, like the weather. What mattered was the pure instru- 
mentality of the individual. As a man as of a knife: does it 
cut well? Nothing else mattered. 

Everything in the world has its function, and is good or 
not good in so far as it fulfils this function more or less per- 
fectly. Was a miner a good miner? Then he was complete. 
Was a manager a good manager? That was enough. Gerald 
himself, who was responsible for all this industry, was he a 
good director? If he were, he had fulfilled his life. The rest 
was by-play. 

The mines were there, they were old. They were giving out, 
it did not pay to work the seams. There was talk of closing 
down two of them. It was at this point that Gerald arrived 
on the scene. 

He looked around. There lay the mines. They were old, 
obsolete. They were like old lions, no more good. He looked 
again. Pah! the mines were nothing but the clumsy efforts 
of impure minds. There they lay, abortions of a half-trained 
mind. Let the idea of them be swept away. He cleared his 
brain of them, and thought only of the coal in the under 
earth. How much was there? 

There was plenty of coal. The old workings could not get 
at it, that was all. Then break the neck of the old workings. 
The coal lay there in its seams, even though the seams were 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 255 


thin. There it lay, inert matter, as it had always lain, since 
the beginning of time, subject to the will of man. The will of 
man was the determining factor. Man was the arch-god of 
earth. His mind was obedient to serve his will. Man’s will 
was the absolute, the only absolute. 

And it was his will to subjugate Matter to his own ends. 
The subjugation itself was the point, the fight was the be-all, 
the fruits of victory were mere results. It was not for the 
sake of money that Gerald took over the mines. He did not 
care about money, fundamentally. He was neither ostenta- 
tious nor luxurious, neither did he care about social position, 
not finally. What he wanted was the pure fulfilment of his 
own will in the struggle with the natural conditions. His will 
was now, to take the coal out of the earth, profitably. The 
profit was merely the condition of victory, but the victory 
itself lay in the feat achieved. He vibrated with zest before 
the challenge. Every day he was in the mines, examining, 
testing, he consulted experts, he gradually gathered the whole 
situation into his mind, as a general grasps the plan of his 
campaign. 

Then there was need for a complete break. The mines were 
run on an old system, an obsolete idea. The initial idea had 
_ been, to obtain as much money from the earth as would make 
the owners comfortably rich, would allow the workmen suf- 
ficient wages and good conditions, and would increase the 
wealth of the country altogether. Gerald’s father, following 
in the second generation, having a sufficient fortune, had 
thought only of the men. The mines, for him, were pri- 
marily great fields to produce bread and plenty for all the 
hundreds of human beings gathered about them. He had 
lived and striven with his fellow owners to benefit the men 
every time. And the men had been benefited in their fashion. 
There were few poor, and few needy. All was plenty, because 
the mines were good and easy to work. And the miners, in 
those days, finding themselves richer than they might have 
expected, felt glad and triumphant. They thought them- 
selves well-off, they congratulated themselves on their good- 
fortune, they remembered how their fathers had starved and 


256 WOMEN IN LOVE 


_ suffered, and they felt that better times had come. They were 
grateful to those others, the pioneers, the new owners, who had 
opened out the pits, and let forth this stream of plenty. 

But man is never satisfied, and so the miners, from grati- 
tude to their owners, passed on to murmuring. Their suf- 
ficiency decreased with knowledge, they wanted more. Why 
should the master be so out of all proportion rich? 

There was a crisis when Gerald was a boy, when the Mas- 
ters’ Federation closed down the mines because the men would 
not accept a reduction. This lock-out had forced home the 
new conditions to Thomas Crich. Belonging to the Federation, 
he had been compelled by his honour to close the pits against 
his men. He, the father, the Patriarch, was forced to deny 
the means of life to his sons, his people. He, the rich man 
who would hardly enter heaven because of his possessions, 
must now turn upon the poor, upon those who were nearer 
Christ than himself, those who were humble and despised and 
closer to perfection, those who were manly and noble in their 
labours, and must say to them: “Ye shall neither labour nor 
eat bread.” 

It was this recognition of the state of war which really broke 
his heart. He wanted his industry to be run on love. Oh, he 
wanted love to be the directing power even of the mines. And 
now, from under the cloak of love, the sword was cynically 
drawn, the sword of mechanical necessity. 

This really broke his heart. He must have the illusion and 
now the illusion was destroyed. The men were not against 
kim, but they were against the masters. It was war, and willy 
nilly he found himself on the wrong side, in his ewn con- 
science. Seething masses of miners met daily, carried away 
by a new religious impulse. The idea flew through them: “All 
men are equal on earth,” and they would carry the idea to its 
material fulfilment. After all, is it not the teaching of Christ? 
And what is an idea, if not the germ of action in the material 
world. “All men are equal in spirit, they are all sons of God. 
Whence then this obvious disquality?” It was a religious creed 
pushed to its material conclusion. Thomas Crich at least had 
no answer. He could but admit, according to his sincere tenets, 


ee oe 


“a RSS see eee Oe 


eS Se ee 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 257 


that the disquality was wrong. But he could not give up his 
goods, which were the stuff of disquality. So the men would 
fight for their rights. The last impulses of the last religious 
passion left on earth, the passion for equality, inspired them. 

Seething mobs of men marched about, their faces lighted up 
as for holy war, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle 
the passion for equality from the passion of cupidity, when 
begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the God was 
the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of 
the great productive machine. Every man equally was part 
of this Godhead. But somehow, somewhere, Thomas Crich 
knew this was false. When the machine is the Godhead, and 
production or work is worship, then the most mechanical mind 
is purest and highest, the representative of God on earth. And 
the rest are subordinate, each according to his degree. 

Riots broke out, Whatmore pit-head was in flames. This 


- was the pit furthest in the country, near the woods. Soldiers 


came. From the windows of Shortlands, on that fatal day, 
could be seen the flare of fire in the sky not far off, and now 
the little colliery train, with the workmen’s carriages which 
were used to convey the miners to the distant Whatmore, was 
crossing the valley full of soldiers, full of red-coats. Then 
there was the far-off sound of firing, then the later news 
that the mob was dispersed, one man was shot dead, the fire 
was put out. 

Gerald, who was a boy, was filled with the wildest excitement 
and delight. He longed to go with the soldiers to shoot the 
men. But he was not allowed to go out of the lodge gates. 
At the gates were stationed sentries with guns. Gerald stood 
near them in delight, whilst gangs of derisive miners strolled 
up and down the lanes, calling and jeering: 

“Now then, three ha’porth o’ coppers, let’s see thee shoot 
thy gun.” Insults were chalked on the walls and the fences, 
the servants left. 

And all this while Thomas Crich was breaking his heart, 
and giving away hundreds of pounds in charity. Everywhere 
there was free food, a surfeit of free food. Anybody could 
have bread for asking, and a loaf cost only three-ha’pence. 


258 | WOMEN IN LOVE 


Every day there was a free tea somewhere, the children had 
never had so many treats in their lives. On Friday afternoon 
great basketfuls of buns and cakes were taken into the schools, 
and great pitchers of milk, the school-children had what they 
wanted. They were sick with eating too much cake and milk. 

And then it came to an end, and the men went back to work. 
But it was never the same as before. There was a new situa- 
tion created, a new idea reigned. Even in the machine, there 
should be equality. No part should be subordinate to any 
other part: all should be equal. The instinct for chaos had 
entered. Mystic equality lies in being, not in having or in 
doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, 
one part, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a 
condition of being. But the desire for chaos had risen, and 
the idea of mechanical equality was the weapon of disruption 
which should execute the will of man, the will for chaos. 

Gerald was a boy at the time of the strike, but he longed 
to be a man, to fight the colliers. The father however was 
trapped between two half-truths, and broken. He wanted to 
be a pure Christian, one and equal with all men. He even 
wanted to give away all he had, to the poor. Yet he was a 
great promoter of industry, and he knew perfectly that he 
must keep his goods and keep his authority. This was as 
divine a necessity in him, as the need to give away all he 
possessed—more divine even, since this was the necessity he 
acted upon. Yet because he did mot act on the other ideal, 
it dominated him, he was dying of chagrin because he must for- 
feit it. He wanted to be a father of loving kindness and sacri- 
ficial benevolence. The colliers shouted to him about his 
thousands a year. They would not be deceived. 

When Gerald grew up in the ways of the world, he shifted 
the position. He did not care about the equality. The whole 
Christian attitude of love and self-sacrifice was old hat. He 
knew that position and authority were the right thing in the 
world, and it was useless to cant about it. They were the right 
thing, for the simple reason that they were functionally neces- 
sary. They were not the be-all and the end-all. It was like 
being part of a machine. He himself happened to be a con- 


: 
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| 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 259 


trolling, central part, the masses of men were the parts vari- 
ously controlled. This was merely as it happened, As well 
get excited because a central hub drives a hundred outer 
wheels—or because the whole universe wheels round the sun. 
After all, it would be mere silliness to say that the moon and 
the earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Venus have just as much 
right to be the centre of the universe, each of them separately, 
as the sun. Such an assertion is made merely in the desire 
of chaos. 

Without bothering to think to a conclusion, Gerald jumped 
to a conclusion. He abandoned the whole democratic-equality 
problem as a problem of silliness. What mattered was the 
great social productive machine. Let that work perfectly, let 
it produce a sufficiency of everything, let every man be given 
a rational portion, greater or less according to his functional 
degree or magnitude, and then, provision made, let the devil 
supervene, let every man look after his own amusements and 
appetites, so long as he interfered with nobody. 

So Gerald set himself to work, to put the great industry in 
order. In his travels, and in his accompanying readings, he 
had come to the conclusion that the essential secret of life 
was harmony. He did not define to himself at all clearly 
what harmony was. The word pleased him, he felt he had 
come to his own conclusions. And he proceeded to put his 
philosophy into practice by forcing order into the established 
world, translating the mystic word harmony into the cine 
word organisation. 

Immediately he saw the firm, he realised what he could 
do. He had a fight to fight with Matter, with the earth and 
the coal it enclosed. This was the sole idea, to turn upon 
the inanimate matter of the underground, and reduce it to his 
will. And for this fight with matter, one must have perfect 
instruments in perfect organisation, a mechanism so subtle 
and harmonious in its workings that it represents the single 
mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given move- 
ment will accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It 
was this inhuman principle in the mechanism he wanted to 
construct that inspired Gerald with an almost religious exalta- 


260 WOMEN IN LOVE 


tion. He, the man, could interpose a perfect, changeless, god- 
like medium between himself and the Matter he had to subju- 
gate. There were two opposites, his will and the resistant 
Matter of the earth. And between these he could establish the 
very expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a 
great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, 
pure mechanical repetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence 
eternal and infinite. He found his eternal and his infinite in 
the pure machine-principle of perfect co-ordination into one 
pure, complex infinitely repeated motion, like the spinning of 
a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the revolving of the uni- 
verse may be called a productive spinning, a productive repe- 
tition through eternity, to infinity. And this is the God- 
motion, this productive repetition ad infinitum. And Gerald 
was the God of the machine, Deus ex Machina. And the whole 
productive will of man was the Godhead. 

He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great 
and perfect system in which the will of man ran smooth and 
unthwarted, timeless, a Godhead in process. He had to begin 
with the mines. The terms were given: first the resistant Mat- 
ter of the underground; then the instruments of its subjugation, 
instruments human and metallic; and finally his own pure will, 
his own mind. It would need a marvellous adjustment of 
myriad instruments, human, animal, metallic, kinetic, dynamic, 
a marvellous casting of myriad tiny wholes into one great per- 
fect entirety. And then, in this case there was perfection at- 
tained, the will of the highest was perfectly fulfilled, the will 
of mankind was perfectly enacted; for was not mankind mys- 
tically contra-distinguished against inanimate Matter, was not 
the history of mankind just the history of the conquest of the 
one by the other? 

“The miners were overreached. While they were still in the 
toils of divine equality of man, Gerald had passed on, granted 
essentially their case, and proceeded in his quality of human 
being to fulfil the will of mankind as a whole. He merely 
represented the miners in a higher sense when he perceived 
that the only way to fulfil perfectly the will of man was to 
establish the perfect, inhuman machine. But he represented 


<3" bain fe 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 261 


them very essentially, they were far behind, out of date, squab- 
bling for their material. equality. The desire had already 
transmuted into this new and greater desire, for a perfect inter- 
vening mechanism between man and Matter, the desire to 
translate the Godhead into pure mechanism. 

As soon as Gerald entered the firm, the convulsion of death 
ran through the old system. He had all his life been tortured 
by a furious and destructive demon, which possessed him 
sometimes like an insanity. This temper now entered like a 
virus into the firm, and there were cruel eruptions. Terrible 
and inhuman were his examinations into every detail; there 
was no privacy he would spare, no old sentiment but he would 
turn it over. The old grey managers, the old grey clerks, the 
doddering old pensioners, he looked at them, and removed 
them as so much lumber. The whole concern seemed like a 
hospital of invalid employees. He had no emotional qualms. 
He arranged what pensions were necessary, he looked for 
efficient substitutes, and when these were found, he substi- 
tuted them for the old hands. 

“T’ve a pitiful letter here from Letherington,” his father 
would say, in a tone of deprecation and appeal. ‘Don’t you 
think the poor fellow might keep on a little longer? I always. 
fancied he did very well.” 

“T’ve got a man in his place now, father. He’ll be happier out 
of it, believe me. You think his allowance is plenty, don’t you?” 

“It’s not the allowance that he wants, poor man. He feels 
it very much, that he is superannuated. Says he thought he 
had twenty more years of work in him yet.” 

“Not of this kind of work I want. He doesn’t under- 
stand.” . 

The father sighed. He wanted not to know any more. He 


_ believed the pits would have to be overhauled if they were 


to go on working. And after all, it would be worse in the long 
run for everybody, if they must close down. So he could 
make no answer to the appeals of his old and trusty servants, 


| he could only repeat “Gerald says.” 


So the father drew more and more out of the light. The 


iq whole frame of the real life was broken for him. He had 


262 WOMEN IN LOVE . 


been right according to his lights. And his lights had been 
those of the great religion. Yet they seemed to have become 
obsolete, to be superseded in the world. He. could not under- 
stand. He only withdrew with his lights into an inner room, 
into the silence. The beautiful candles of belief, that would 
not do to light the world any more, they would still burn 
sweetly and sufficiently in the inner room of his soul; and 
in the silence of his retirement. 

Gerald rushed into the reform of the firm, -beginning with 
the office. It was needful to economise severely, to make 
possible the great alterations he must introduce. 

“What are these widows’ coals?” he asked. 

“We have always allowed all widows of men who worked 
for the firm a load of coals every three months.” 

“They must pay cost price henceforward. The firm is not 
a. charity institution, as everybody seems to think.” 

Widows, these stock figures of sentimental humanitarianism, 
he felt a dislike at the thought of them. They were almost 
repulsive. Why were they not immolated on the pyre of 
the husband, like the sati in India? At any rate, let them 
pay the cost of their coals. 

In a thousand ways he cut down the expenditure, in ways 
so fine as to be hardly noticeable to the men. The miners 
must pay for the cartage of their coals, heavy cartage too; 
they must pay for their tools, for the sharpening, for the care 
of lamps, for the many trifling things that made the bill of 
charges against every man mount up to a shilling or so in the 
week. It was not grasped very definitely by the miners, though 
they were sore enough. But it saved hundreds of pounds every 
week for the firm. 

Gradually Gerald got hold of everything. And then began 
the great reform. Expert engineers were introduced in every 
department. An enormous electric plant was installed, both 
for lighting and for haulage underground, and for power. The 
electricity was carried into every mine. New machinery was 
brought from America, such as the miners had never seen 
before, great iron men, as the cutting machines were called, 
and unusual appliances. The working of the pits was thor- 


: 


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ee Se 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 263 


oughly changed, all the control was taken out of the hands 
of the miners, the butty system was abolished. Everything was 
run on the most accurate and delicate scientific method, 
educated and expert men were in control everywhere, the miners 
were reduced to mere mechanical instruments. They had to 
work hard, much harder than before, the work was terrible and 
heart-breaking in its mechanicalness. 

But they submitted to it all. The joy went out of their 
lives, the hope seemed to perish as they became more and 
more mechanised. And yet they accepted the new conditions. 
They even got a further satisfaction out of them. At first 
they hated Gerald Crich, they swore to do something to him, 
to murder him. But as time went on, they accepted everything 
with some fatal satisfaction. Gerald was their high priest, 
he represented the religion they really felt. His father was 
forgotten already. There was a new world, a new order, strict, 
terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness. 
The men were satisfied to belong to the great and wonderful 
machine, even whilst it destroyed them. It was what they 
wanted. It was the highest that man had produced, the most 
wonderful and superhuman. They were exalted by belonging 
to this great and superhuman system which was beyond feeling 
or reason, something really godlike. Their hearts died within 
them, but their souls were satisfied. It was what they wanted. 
Otherwise Gerald could never have done what he did. He 
was just ahead of them in giving them what they wanted, this 
participation in a great and perfect system that subiected life 
to pure mathematical principles. This was a sort of freedom, 
the sort they really wanted. It was the first great step in 
undoing, the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of the 
mechanical principle for the organic, the destruction of the 
organic purpose, the organic unity, and the subordination of 
every organic unit to the great mechanical purpose. It was 
pure organic disintegration and pure mechanical organisation. 
This is the first and finest state of chaos. 

Gerald was satisfied. He knew the colliers said they hated 
him. But he had long ceased to hate them. When they 
streamed past him at evening, their heavy boots slurring on the 


264 WOMEN IN LOVE 


pavement wearily, their shoulders slightly distorted, they took 
no notice of him, they gave him no greeting whatever, they 
passed in a grey-black stream of unemotional acceptance. They 
were not important to him, save as instruments, nor he to them, 
save aS a supreme instrument of control. As miners they had 
their being, he had his being as director. He admired their 
qualities. But as men, personalities, they were just accidents, 
sporadic little unimportant phenomena. And tacitly, the men 
agreed to this. For Gerald agreed to it in himself. 

He had succeeded. He had converted the industry into a 
new and terrible purity. There was a greater output of coal 
than ever, the wonderful and delicate system ran almost per- 
fectly. He had a set of really clever engineers, both mining 
and electrical, and they did not cost much. A highly educated 
man cost very little more than a workman. His managers, 
who were all rare men, were no more expensive than the old 
bungling fools of his father’s days, who were merely colliers 
promoted. His chief manager, who had twelve hundred:a year, 
saved the firm at least five thousand. The whole system was 
now so perfect that Gerald was hardly necessary any more. 

It was so perfect that sometimes a strange fear came over 
him, and he did not know what to do. He went on for some 
years in a sort of trance of activity. What he was doing 
seemed supreme, he was almost like a divinity. He was a 
pure and exalted activity. | 

But now he had succeeded—he had finally succeeded. And 
once or twice lately, when he was alone in the evening and had 
nothing to do, he had suddenly stood up in terror, not knowing 
what he was. And he went to the mirror and looked long and 
closely at his own face, at his own eyes, seeking for some- 
thing. He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew not 
what of. He looked at his own face. There it was, shapely 
and healthy and the same as ever, yet somehow, it was not 
real, it was a mask. He dared not touch it, for fear it should 
prove to be only a composition mask. His eyes were blue and 
keen as ever, and as firm in their look. Yet he was not sure 
that they were not blue false bubbles that would burst in a 
moment and leave clear annihilation. He could see the dark- 


THE INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE 265 


ness in them, as if they were only bubbles of darkness. He was 
afraid that one day he would break down and be a purely 
meaningless bubble lapping round a darkness. 

But his will yet held good, he was able to go away and 
read, and think about things. He liked to read books about 
the primitive man, books of anthropology, and also works of 
speculative philosophy. His mind was very active. But it 
was like a bubble floating in the darkness. At any moment it 
might burst. and leave him in chaos. He would not die. He 
knew that. He would go on living, but the meaning would have 
collapsed out of him, his divine reason would be gone. In a 
strangely indifferent, sterile way, he was frightened. But he 
could not react even to the fear. It was as if his centres of 
feeling were drying up. He remained calm, calculative and 
healthy, and quite freely deliberate, even whilst he felt, with 
faint, small but final sterile horror, that his mystic reason was 
breaking, giving way now, at this crisis. 

And it was a strain. He knew there was no equilibrium. 
He would have to go in some direction, shortly, to find relief. 
Only Birkin kept the fear definitely off him, saved him his 
quick sufficiency in life, by the odd mobility and changeable- 
ness which seemed to contain the quintessence of faith. But 
then Gerald must always come away from Birkin, as from a 
Church service, back to the outside real world of work and 
life. There it was, it did not alter, and words were futilities. 
He had to keep himself in reckoning with the world of work and 
material life. And it became more and more difficult, such a 
strange pressure was upon him, as if the very middle of him 
were a vacuum, and outside were an awful tension. 

He had found his most satisfactory relief in women. After 
a debauch with some desperate woman, he went on quite easy 
and forgetful. The devil of it was, it was so hard to keep 
up his interest in women nowadays. He didn’t care about 
them any more. A Pussum was all right in her way, but she 
was an exceptional case, and even she mattered extremely little. 
No, women, in that sense, were useless to him any more. He 
felt that his mind needed acute stimulation, before he could 
be physically roused. 


CHAPTER XVIII 
RABBIT 


Guprun knew that it was a critical thing for her to go to 
Shortlands. She knew it was equivalent to accepting Gerald 
Crich as a lover. And though she hung back, disliking the 
condition, yet she knew she would go on. She equivocated. 
She said to herself, in torment recalling the blow and the 
kiss, “after all, what is it? What is a kiss? What even is a 
blow? It is an instant, vanished at once. I can go to Short- 
lands just for a time, before I go away, if only to see what it is 
like.” For she had an insatiable curiosity to see and to know 
everything. 

She also wanted to know what Winifred was really like. 
Having heard the child calling from the steamer in the night, 
she felt some mysterious connection with her. 

Gudrun talked with the father in the library. Then he sent 
for his daughter. She came accompanied by Mademoiselle. 

“Winnie, this is Miss Brangwen, who will be so kind as to 
help you with your drawing and making models of your 
animals,” said the father. 

The child looked at Gudrun for a moment with interest, 
before she came forward and with face averted offered her 
hand. There was a complete sang froid and indifference under 
Winifred’s childish reserve, a certain irresponsible callousness. 

“How do you do?” said the child, not lifting her, face. 

“How do you do?” said Gudrun. 

Then Winifred stood aside, and Gudrun was introduced to 
Mademoiselle. 

“You have a fine day for your walk,” said Mademoiselle, in 
a bright manner. 

“Ouite fine,” said Gudrun. 

Winifred was watching from her distance. She was as if . 
amused, but rather unsure as yet what this new person was 

266 


RABBIT 26> 


like. She saw so many new persons, and so few who became 
real to her. Mademoiselle was of no count whatever, the 
child merely put up with her, calmly and easily, accepting 
her little authority with faint scorn, compliant out of childish 
arrogance of indifference. 

“Well, Winifred,” said the father, “aren’t you glad Miss 
Brangwen has come? She makes animals and birds in wood 
and in clay, that the people in London write about in the 
papers, praising them to the skies.” 

Winifred smiled slightly. 

“Who told you, Daddie?” she asked. 

“Who told me? Hermione told me, and Rupert Birkin.” 

“Do you know them?” Winifred asked of Gudrun, turning 
to her with faint challenge. 

“Ves,” said Gudrun. 

Winifred readjusted herself a little. She had been ready to 
accept Gudrun as a sort of servant. Now she saw it was on 
terms of friendship they were intended to meet. She was 
rather glad. She had so many half inferiors, whom she tol- 
erated with perfect good-humour. 

Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things 
very seriously. A new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. 
However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would 
never attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by 
her. The first meetings went off with a certain humiliating 
clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any 
social grace. 

Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. 
Winifred did not notice human beings unless they were like 
herself, playful and slightly mocking. She would accept nothing 
but the world of amusement, and the serious people of her 
life were the animals she had for pets. On those she lavished, 
almost ironically, her affection and her companionship. To 
the rest of the human scheme she submitted with a faint bored 
indifference. 

She had a Pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved. 

“Let us draw Looloo,” said Gudrun, “and see if we can get 
his Looliness, shall we?” 


268 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Darling!” cried Winifred, rushing to the dog, that sat with 
contemplative sadness on the hearth, and kissing its bulging 
brow. “Darling one, will you be drawn? Shall its mummy 
draw its portrait?’”? Then she chuckled gleefully, and turning 
to Gudrun, said: “Oh, let’s!” | 

They proceeded to get pencils and paper, and were ready. 

“Beautifullest,” cried Winifred, hugging the dog, “sit still 
while its mummy draws its beautiful portrait.” The dog 
looked up at her with grievous resignation in its large, promi- 
nent eyes. She kissed it fervently, and said: “I wonder what 
mine will be like. It’s sure to be awful.” 

As she sketched she chuckled to herself, and cried out at 
times: 

“Oh, darling, you’re so beautiful!” 

And again chuckling, she rushed to embrace the dog, in 
penitence, as if she were doing him some subtle injury. He 
sat all the time with the resignation and fretfulness of ages 
on his dark velvety face. She drew slowly, with a wicked 
concentration in her eyes, her head on one side, an intense 
stillness over her. Sbe was as if working the spell of some 
enchantment. Suddenly she had finished. She looked at the 
dog, and then at her drawing, and then cried, with real grief 
for the dog, and at the same time with a wicked exultation: 

‘“My beautiful, why did they?” 

She took her paper to the dog, and held it under his nose. 
He turned his head aside as in chagrin and mortification, and 
she impulsively kissed his velvety bulging forehead. 

“°s a Loolie, ’s a little Loozie! Look at his portrait, 
darling, look at his portrait, that his mother has done of him.” 
She looked at her paper and chuckled. Then, kissing the dog 
once more, she rose and came gravely to Gudrun, offering her 
the paper. 

It was a grotesque little diagram of a grotesque little animal, 
so wicked and so comical, a slow smile came over Gudrun’s 
face, unconsciously. And at her side Winifred chuckled with 
glee, and said: 

“Tt isn’t like him, is it? He’s much lovelier than that. 
He’s so beautiful—mmm, Looloo, my sweet darling.” And 


SS a ee ee A : ‘yf 


“—, Se TS Oa 


RABBIT 269 


she flew off to embrace the chagrined little dog. He looked 
up at her with reproachful, saturnine eyes, vanquished in his 
extreme agedness of being. Then she flew back to her drawing, 
and chuckled with satisfaction. 

“Tt isn’t like him, is it?” she said to Gudrun. 

“Yes, it’s very like him,” Gudrun replied. 

The child treasured her drawing, carried it about with i, 
and showed it, with a silent embarrassment, to everybody. 

“Look,” she said, thrusting the paper into her father’s hand. 

“Why that’s Looloo!” he exclaimed. And he looked down 
in surprise, hearing the almost inhuman chuckle of the child 
at his side. 

Gerald was away from home when Gudrun first came to 
Shortlands. But the first morning he came back he watched 
for her. It was a sunny, soft morning, and he lingered in the 
garden paths, looking at the flowers that had come out during 
his absence. He was clean and fit as ever, shaven, his fair 
hair scrupulously parted at the side, bright in the sunshine, 
his short, fair moustache closely clipped, his eyes with their 
humorous kind twinkle, which was so deceptive. He was 
dressed in black, his clothes sat well on his well-nourished 
body. Yet as he lingered before the flower-beds in the morning 
sunshine, there was a certain isolation, a fear about him, as of 
something wanting. 

Gudrun came up quickly, unseen. She was dressed in blue, 
with woollen yellow stockings, like the Bluecoat boys. He 
glanced up in surprise. Her stockings always disconcerted 
him, the pale-yellow stockings and the heavy heavy black 
shoes. Winifred, who had been playing about the garden 
with Mademoiselle and the dogs, came flitting towards Gudrun. 
The child wore a dress of black-and-white stripes. Her hair 
was rather short, cut round and hanging level in her neck. 

“We're going to do Bismarck, aren’t we?” she said, linking 
her hand through Gudrun’s arm. 

“Yes, we’re going to do Bismarck. Do you want to?” 

“Oh yes—oh I do! I want most awfully to do Bismarck. 
He looks so splendid this morning, so fierce. He’s almost as 


270 WOMEN IN LOVE 


big as a lion.” And the child chuckled sardonically at her 
own hyperbole. “He’s a real king, he really is.” 

“Bon jour, Mademoiselle,” said the little French governess, 
wavering up with a slight bow, a bow of the sort that Gudrun 
loathed, insolent. 

“Winifred veut tant faire le portrait de Bismarck—! Oh, 
mais toute le matinée—‘We will do Bismarck this morning!’ 
—Bismarck, Bismarck, toujours Bismarck! C’est un lapin, 
n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?” 

“Oui, c’est un grand lapin blanc et noir. Vous ne l’avez 
pas vu?” said Gudrun in her good, but rather heavy French. 

“Non, mademoiselle, Winifred n’a jamais voulu me le faire 
voir. Tant de fois je le lui ai demandé, ‘Qu’est ce donc que ce 
Bismarck, Winifred?’ Mais elle n’a pas voulu me le dire. Son 
Bismarck, c’était un mystere.” 

“Oui, c’est un mystére, vraiment un mystére! Miss Brang- 
wen, say that Bismarck is a mystery,” cried Winifred. 

“Bismarck is a mystery, Bismarck, c’est un mystére, der 
Bismarck, er ist ein Wunder,” said Gudrun, in mocking 
incantation. 

“Ja er ist ein Wunder,” repeated Winifred, with odd 
seriousness, under which lay a wicked chuckle. 

“Ist er auch ein Wunder?” came the slightly insolent sneering 
of Mademoiselle. 

“Doch!” said Winifred briefly, indifferent. 

“Doch ist er nicht ein Konig. Beesmarck, he was not a king, 
Winifred, as you have said. He was only—il n’était que 
chancelier,” 

“Qu’est ce qu’un chancelier?” said Winifred, with slightly 
contemptuous indifference. 

“A chancelier is a chancellor, and a chancellor is, I believe, 
a sort of judge,” said Gerald, coming up and shaking hands 
with Gudrun. ‘You'll have made a song of Bismarck soon,” 
said he. 

Mademoiselle waited, and discreetly made her inclination, 
and her greeting. 

“So they wouldn’t let you see Bismarck, Mademoiselle?’’ he 
said. 


RABBIT 271 


“Non, Monsieur.” 

“Ay, very mean of them. What are you going to do to him, 
Miss Brangwen? I want him sent to the kitchen and cooked,” 

“Oh no,” cried Winifred. 

“We're going to draw him,” said Gudrun. 

“Draw him and quarter him and dish him up,” he said, 
being purposely fatuous. 

“Oh no,” cried Winifred with emphasis, chuckling. 

Gudrun detected the tang of mockery in him, and she 
looked up and smiled into his face. He felt his nerves caressed. 
Their eyes met in knowledge. 

“How do you like Shortlands?” he asked. 

“Oh, very much,” she said, with nonchalance. 

“Glad you do. Have you noticed these flowers?” 

He led her along the path. She followed intently. Winifred 
came, and the governess lingered in the rear. They stopped 
before some veined salpiglossis flowers. 

“Aren’t they wonderful!” she cried, looking at them absorb- 
edly. Strange how her reverential, almost ecstatic admiration 
of the flowers caressed his nerves. She stooped down, and 
touched the trumpets, with infinitely fine and delicate-touching: 
finger-tips. It filled him with ease to see her. When she rose, 
her eyes, hot with the beauty of the flowers, looked into his. 

“What are they?” she asked. 

“Sort of petunia, I suppose,”’ he answered. “I don’t really 
know them.” 

“They are quite strangers to me,” she said. 

They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. 
And he was in love with her. 

She was aware of Mademoiselle standing near, like a little 
French beetle, observant and calculating. She moved away 
with Winifred, saying they would go to find Bismarck. 

Gerald watched them go, looking all the while at the soft, 
full, still body of Gudrun, in its silky cashmere. How silky 
and rich and soft her body must be. An excess of appreciation 
came over his mind, she was the all-desirable, the all-beautiful. 
He wanted only to come to her, nothing more. He was only 
this, this being that should come to her, and be given to her. — 


272 WOMEN IN LOVE 


At the same time he was finely and acutely aware of 
Mademoiselle’s neat, brittle finality of form. She was like 
some elegant beetle with thin ankles, perched on her high 
heels, her glossy black dress perfectly correct, her dark hair 
done high and admirably. How repulsive her completeness and 
her finality was! He loathed her. 

Yet he did admire her. She was perfectly correct. And 
it did rather annoy him, that Gudrun came dressed in startling 
colours, like a macaw, when the family was in mourning. Like 
a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she took 
her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, 
and her dress a deep blue. Yet it pleased him. It pleased him 
very much. He felt the challenge in her very attire—she 
challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the note of a 
trumpet. 

Gudrun and Winifred went through the house to the back, 
where were the stables and the out-buildings. Everywhere 
was still and deserted. Mr. Crich had gone out for a short 
drive, the stable-man had just led round Gerald’s horse. The 
two girls went to the hutch that stood in a corner, and looked 
at the great black-and-white rabbit. 

“Tsn’t he beautiful! Oh, do look at him listening! Doesn’t 
he look silly!” she laughed quickly, then added, “‘Oh, do let’s 
do him listening, do let us, he listens with so much of himself; 
—don’t you darling Bismarck?” 

“Can we take him out?” said Gudrun. 

‘‘He’s very strong. He really is extremely strong.” She 
looked at Gudrun, her head on one side, in odd calculating 
mistrust. 

“But we'll try, shall we?” 

“Yes, if you like. But he’s a fearful kicker!” 

They took the key to unlock the door. The rabbit exploded 
in a wild rush round the hutch. 

“He scratches most awfully sometimes,” cried Winifred in 
excitement. “Oh do look at him, isn’t he wonderful!” The 
rabbit tore round the hutch in a flurry. “Bismarck!” cried 
the child, in rousing excitement. “How dreadful you are! You 
are beastly.” Winifred looked up at Gudrun with some 


rics le 


RABBIT 273 


misgiving in her wild excitement. Gudrun smiled sardonically 
with her mouth. Winifred made a strange crooning noise of 
unaccountable excitement. “Now he’s still!” she cried, seeing 
the rabbit settled down in a far corner of the hutch. “Shall 
we take him now?” she whispered excitedly, mysteriously, 
looking up at Gudrun and edging very close. “Shall we get 
him now?—” she chuckled wickedly to herself. 

They unlocked the door of the hutch. Gudrun thrust in 
her arm and seized the great, lusty rabbit as it crouched still, 
she grasped its long ears. It set its four feet flat, and thrust 
back. There was a long scraping sound as it was hauled 
forward, and in another instant it was in mid-air, lunging 
wildly, its body flying like a spring coiled and released, as it 
lashed out, suspended from the ears. Gudrun held the black- 
and-white tempest at arms’ length, averting her face. But the 
rabbit was magically strong, it was all she could do to keep 
her grasp. She almost lost her presence of mind. 

“Bismarck, Bismarck, you are behaving terribly,” said Wini- 
fred in a rather frightened voice, “Oh, do put him down, he’s. 
beastly.” 

Gudrun stood for a moment astounded by the thunderstorm 
that had sprung into being in her grip. Then her colour came 
up, a heavy rage came over her like a cloud. She stood shaken 
as a house in a storm, and utterly overcome. Her heart was 
arrested with fury at the mindlessness and the bestial stupidity 
of this struggle, her wrists were badly scored by the claws of 
the beast, a heavy cruelty welled up in her. 

Gerald came round as she was trying to capture the flying 
rabbit under her arm. He saw, with subtle recognition, her 
sullen passion of cruelty. | 

“You should let one of the men do that for you,” he said 
hurrying up. 

“Oh, he’s so horrid!” cried Winifred, almost frantic. 

He held out his nervous, sinewy hand and took the rabbit 
by the ears, from Gudrun. 

“It’s most fearfully strong,” she cried, in a high voice, like 
the crying of a seagull, strange and vindictive. 

The rabbit made itself into a ball in the air, and lashed out, 


274 WOMEN IN LOVE 


flinging itself into a bow. It really seemed demoniacal. Gudrun 
saw Gerald’s body tighten, saw a sharp blindness come into 
his eyes. 

“TI know these beggars of old,” he said. 

The long, demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the 
air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then 
closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The 
man’s body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a 
sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as 
lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a 
hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came 
the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. 
It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in 
a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of 
paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his 
arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was gleaming 
with a smile. 

“You wouldn’t think there was all that force in a rabbit,” 
he said, looking at Gudrun. And he saw her eyes black as night 
in her pallid face, she looked almost unearthly. The scream 
of the rabbit, after the violent tussle, seemed to have torn the 
veil of her consciousness. He looked at her, and the whitish, 
electric gleam in his face intensified. 

“T don’t really like him,” Winifred was crooning. “I don’t 
care for him as I do for Loozie. He’s hateful really.” 

A smile twisted Gudrun’s face, as she recovered. She knew 
she was revealed. 

“Don’t they make the most fearful noise when they scream?” 
she cried, the high note in her voice, like a seagull’s cry. 

“Abominable,” he said. 

“He shouldn’t be so silly when he has to be taken out,” 
Winifred was saying, putting out her hand and touching the 
rabbit tentatively, as it skulked under his arm, motionless as if 
it were dead. 

““He’s not dead, is he Gerald?” she asked. 

“No, he ought to be,” he said. 

“Ves, he ought!” cried the child, with a sudden flush of 
amusement. And she touched the rabbit with more confidence. 


Ee ae. , 


RABBIT 275 


“His heart is beating so fast. Isn’t he funny? He really is.” 

“Where do you want him?” asked Gerald. 

“Tn the little green court,” she said. 

Gudrun looked at Gerald with strange, darkened eyes, 
strained with underworld knowledge, almost supplicating, like 
those of a creature which is at his mercy, yet which is his 
ultimate victor. He did not know what to say to her. He 
felt the mutual hellish recognition. And he felt he ought to 
say something, to cover it. He had the power of lightning in 
his nerves, she seemed like a soft recipient of his magical, 
hideous white fire. He was unconfident, he had qualms of fear. 

“Did he hurt you?” he asked. 

“No,” she said. 

“He’s an insensible beast,” he said, binning his face away. 

They came to the little court, which was shut in by old red 
walls in whose crevices wall-flowers were growing. The grass 
was soft and fine and old, a level floor carpeting the court, the 
sky was blue overhead. Gerald tossed the rabbit down. It 
crouched still and would not move. Gudrun watched it with 
faint horror. 

“Why doesn’t it move?” she cried. 

“Tt’s skulking,” he said. 

She looked up at him, and a slight sinister smile contracted 
her white face. 

“Tsn’t it a fool/” she cried. ‘“Isn’t it a sickening fool?” The 
vindictive mockery in her voice made his brain quiver. 
Glancing up at him, into his eyes, she revealed again the 
mocking, white-cruel recognition. There was a league between 
them, abhorrent to them both. They were implicated with 
each other in abhorrent mysteries. 

“How many scratches have you?” he asked, showing his 
hard forearm, white and hard and torn in red gashes. 

“How really vile!” she cried, flushing with a sinister vision. 
“Mine is nothing.” 

She lifted her arm and showed a deep red score down the 
silken white flesh. 

“What a devil!” he exclaimed. But it was as if he had 
had knowledge of her in the long red rent of her forearm, so 


276 WOMEN IN LOVE 


silken and soft. He did not want to touch her. He would 
have to make himself touch her, deliberately. The long, 
shallow red rip seemed torn across his own brain, tearing the 
surface of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the 
forever unconscious, unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the 
obscene beyond. 

“Tt doesn’t hurt you very much, does it?” he asked solicitous. 

“Not at all,” she cried. 

And suddenly the rabbit, which had been crouching as if 
it were a flower, so still and soft, suddenly burst into life. 
Round and round the court it went, as if shot from a gun, 
round and round like a furry meteorite, in a tense hard circle 
that seemed to bind their brains. They all stood in amazement, 
smiling uncannily, as if the rabbit were obeying some unknown 
incantation. Round and round it flew, on the grass under the 
old red walls like a storm. 

And then quite suddenly it settled down, hobbled among 
the grass, and sat considering, its nose twitching like a-bit of 
fluff in the wind. After having considered for a few minutes, a 
soft bunch with a black, open eye, which perhaps was looking 
at them, perhaps was not, it hobbled calmly forward and began 
to nibble the grass with that mean motion of a rabbit’s quick 
eating. 

“Tt’s mad,” said Gudrun. “It is most decidedly mad.” 

He laughed. : 

“The question is,” he said, “what is madness? I don’t 
suppose it is rabbit-mad.” 

“Don’t you think it is?” she asked. 

“No. That’s what it is to be a rabbit.” 

There was a queer, faint, obscene smile over his face. She 
looked at him and saw him, and knew that he was initiate as 
she was initiate. This thwarted her, and contravened her, 
for the moment. 

“God be praised we aren’t rabbits,” she said, in a high, shrill 
voice. 

The smile intensified a little, on his face. 

“Not rabbits?” he said, looking at her fixedly. 

Slowly her face relaxed into a smile of obscene recognition. 


— 


g 


RABBIT 277 


“Ah Gerald,” she said, in a strong, slow, almost man-like 
way. ‘“—All that, and more.” Her eyes looked up at him 
with shocking nonchalance. 

He felt again as if she had hit him across the face—or 
rather, as if she had torn him across the breast, dully, finally. 
He turned aside. 

“Eat, eat my darling!” Winifred was softly conjuring the 
rabbit, and creeping forward to touch it. It hobbled away 
from her. “Let its mother stroke its fur then, darling, because 
it is so mysterious—” 


CHAPTER XIX 
MOONY 


AFTER his illness Birkin went to the south of. France for a 
time. He did not write, nobody heard anything of him. 
Ursula, left alone, felt as if everything were lapsing out. There 
seemed to be no hope in the world. One was a tiny little rock 
with the tide of nothingness rising higher and higher. She 
herself was real, and only herself—just like a rock in a wash 
of flood-water. The rest was all nothingness. She was hard 
and indifferent, isolated in herself. 

There was nothing for it now, but contemptuous, resistant 
indifference. All the world was lapsing into a grey wish-wash 
of nothingness, she had no contact and no connection anywhere. 
She despised and detested the whole show. From the bottom 
of her heart, from the bottom of her soul, she despised and 
detested people, adult people. She loved only children and 
animals: children she loved passionately, but coldly, They 
made her want to hug them, to protect them, to give them life. 
But this very love, based on pity and despair, was only a 
bondage and a pain to her. She loved best of all the animals, 
that were single and unsocial as she herself was. She loved 
the horses and cows in the field. Each was single and to itself, 
magical. It was not referred away to some detestable social 
principle. It was incapable of soulfulness and tragedy, which 
she detested so profoundly. 

She could be very pleasant and flattering, almost subservient, 
to people she met. But no one was taken in. Instinctively each 
felt her contemptuous mockery of the human being in himself, 
or herself. She had a profound grudge against the human being. 
That which the word “human” stood for was despicable and 
repugnant to her. 

Mostly her heart was closed in this hidden, unconscious 
strain of contemptuous ridicule. She thought she loved, she 

278 


MOONY 279 


thought she was full of love. This was her idea of herself. 
But the strange brightness of her presence, a marvellous 
radiance of intrinsic vitality, was a luminousness of supreme 
repudiation, nothing but repudiation. 

Yet, at moments, she yielded and softened, she wanted pure 
love, only pure love. This other, this state of constant unfailing 
repudiation, was a strain, a suffering also. A terrible desire for 
pure love overcame her again. 

She went out one evening, numbed by this constant essential 
suffering. Those who are timed for destruction must die now. 
The knowledge of this reached a finality, a finishing in her. 
And the finality released her. If fate would carry off in death 
or downfall all those who were timed to go, why need she 
trouble, why repudiate any further. She was free of it all, 
she could seek a new union elsewhere. 

Ursula set off to Willey Green, towards the mill. She came 
to Willey Water. It was almost full again, after its period of 
emptiness. Then she turned off through the woods. The 
night had fallen, it was dark. But she forgot to be afraid, 
she who had such great sources of fear. Among the trees, far 
from any human beings, there was a sort of magic peace. 
The more one could find a pure loneliness, with no taint of 
people, the better one felt. She was in reality terrified, horri- 
fied in her apprehension of people. 

She started, noticing something on her right hand, between 
the tree trunks. It was like a great presence, watching her, 
dodging her. She started violently. It was only the moon, 
risen through the thin trees. But it seemed so mysterious, 
with it white and deathly smile. And there was no avoiding 
it. Night or day, one could not escape the sinister face, tri- 
umphant and radiant like this moon, with a high smile. She 
hurried on, cowering from the white planet.. She would just 
see the pond at the mill before she went home. 

Not wanting to go through the yard, because of the dogs, she 
turned off along the hill-side to descend on the pond from 
above. The moon was transcendent over the bare, open space, 
she suffered from being exposed to it. There was a glimmer 
of nightly rabbits across the ground. The night was as clear 


280 WOMEN IN LOVE 


as crystal, and very still. She could hear a distant coughing 
of a sheep. 

So she swerved down to the steep, tree-hidden bank above 
the pond, where the alders twisted their roots. She was 
glad to pass into the shade out of the moon. There she stood, 
at the top of the fallen-away bank, her hand on the rough 
trunk of a tree, looking at the water, that was perfect in its 
stillness, floating the moon upon it. But for some reason she 
disliked it. It did not give her anything. She listened for 
the hoarse rustle of the sluice. And she wished for something 
else out of the night, she wanted another night, not this moon- 
brilliant hardness. She could feel her soul crying out in her, 
lamenting desolately. 

She saw a shadow moving by the water. It would be Birkin. 
He had come back then, unawares. She accepted it without 
remark, nothing mattered to her. She sat down among the 
roots of the alder tree, dim and veiled, hearing the sound of 
the sluice like dew distilling audibly into the night. . The 
islands were dark and half revealed, the reeds were dark also, 
only some of them had a little frail fire of reflection. A fish 
leaped secretly, revealing the light in the pond. This fire of 
the chill night breaking constantly on to the pure darkness, 
repelled her. She wished it were perfectly dark, perfectly, 
and noiseless and without motion. Birkin, small and dark 
also, his hair tinged with moonlight, wandered nearer. He 
was quite near, and yet he did not exist in her. He did not 
know she was there. Supposing he did something he would 
not wish to be seen doing, thinking he was quite private? 
But there, what did it matter? What did the small privacies 
matter? How could it matter, what he did? How can there 
be any secrets, we are all the same organisms? How can there 
be any secrecy, when everything is known to all of us? 

He was touching unconsciously the dead husks of flowers 
as he passed by, and talking disconnectedly to himself. 

“You can’t go away,” he was saying. “There is no away. 
You only withdraw upon yourself.” 

He threw a dead flower-husk on to the water. 

“An antiphony—they lie, and you sing back to them. 


ee eee ee ee a 


MOONY 281 


There wouldn’t have to be any truth, if there weren’t any lies. 
Then one needn’t assert anything—” 

He stood still, looking at the water, and throwing upon it 
the husks of the flowers. 

““Cybele—curse her! The accursed Syria Dea! Does one 
begrudge it her? What else is there—?” 

Ursula wanted to laugh loudly and hysterically, hearing his 
isolated voice speaking out. It was so ridiculous. 

He stood staring at the water. Then he stooped and picked 
up a stone, which he threw sharply at the pond. Ursula was 
aware of the bright moon leaping and swaying, all distorted, in 
her eyes. It seemed to shoot out arms of fire like a cuttle- 
fish, like a luminous polyp, palpitating strongly before her. 

And his shadow on the border of the pond, was watching 
for a few moments, then he stooped and groped on the ground. 
Then again there was a bufst of sound, and a burst of bril- 
liant light, the moon had exploded on the water, and was fly- 
ing asunder in flakes of white and dangerous fire. Rapidly, 
like white birds, the fires all broken rose across the pond, flee- 
ing in clamorous confusion, battling with the flock of dark 
waves that were forcing their way in. The furthest waves 
of light, fleeing out, seemed to be clamouring against the shore 
for escape, the waves of darkness came in heavily, running 
under towards the centre. But at the centre, the heart of all, 
was still a vivid, incandescent quivering of a white moon not 
quite destroyed, a white body of fire writhing and striving 
and not even now broken open, not yet violated. It seemed 
to be drawing itself together with strange, violent pangs, in 
blind effort. It was getting stronger, it was re-asserting itself, 
the inviolable moon. And the rays were hastening in in thin 
lines of light, to return to the strengthened moon, that shook 
upon the water in triumphant reassumption. 

Birkin stood and watched, motionless, till the pond was al- 
most calm, the moon was almost serene. Then, satisfied of so 
much, he looked for more stones. She felt his invisible tenacity. 
And in a moment again, the broken lights scattered in ex- 
plosion over her face, dazzling her; and then, almost immedi- 
ately, came the second shot. The moon leapt up white and 


A 


282 WOMEN IN LOVE 


burst through the air. Darts of bright light shot asunder, 
darkness swept over the centre. There was no moon, only 
a battlefield of broken lights and shadows, running close to- 
gether. Shadows, dark and heavy, struck again and again 
across the place where the heart of the moon had been, oblit- 
erating it altogether. The white fragments pulsed up and 
down, and could not find where to go, apart and brilliant on 
the water like the petals of a rose that a wind has blown far 
and wide. 

Yet again, they were flickering their way to the centre, find- 
ing the path blindly, enviously. And again, all was still, as 
Birkin and Ursula watched. The waters were loud on the 
shore. He saw the moon regathering itself insidiously, saw 
the heart of the rose intertwining vigorously and blindly, call- 
ing back the scattered fragments, winning home the fragments, 
in a pulse and in effort of return. 

And he was not satisfied. Like a madness, he must go on. 
He got large stones, and threw them, one after the other, at 
the white-burning centre of the moon, till there was nothing 
but a rocking of hollow noise, and a pond surged up, no moon 
any more, only a few broken flakes tangled and glittering 
broadcast in the darkness, without aim or meaning, a darkened 
confusion, like a black and white kaleidoscope tossed at ran- 
dom. The hollow night was rocking and crashing with noise, 
and from the sluice came sharp, regular flashes of sound. 
Flakes of light appeared here and there, glittering tormented 
among the shadows, far off, in strange places; among the drip- 
ping shadow of the willow on the island. Birkin stood and 
listened and was satisfied. 

Ursula was dazed, her mind was all gone. She felt she had 
fallen to the ground and was spilled out, like water on the 
earth. Motionless and spent she remained in the gloom. 
Though even now she was aware, unseeing, that in the dark- 
ness was a little tumult of ebbing flakes of light, a cluster 
dancing secretly in a round, twining and coming steadily to- 
gether. They were gathering a heart again, they were coming 
once more into being. Gradually the fragments caught to- 
gether re-united, heaving, rocking, dancing, falling back as 


MOONY 283 


in panic, but working their way home again persistently, mak- 
ing semblance of fleeing away when they had advanced, but 
always flickering nearer, a little closer to the mark, the cluster 
growing mysteriously larger and brighter, as gleam after gleam 
fell in with the whole, until a ragged rose, a distorted, frayed 
moon was shaking upon the water again, re-asserted, renewed, 
trying to recover from its convulsion, to get over the disfigure- 
ment and the agitation, to be whole and composed, at peace. 

Birkin lingered vaguely by the water. Ursula was afraid 
that he would stone the moon again. She slipped from her 
seat and went down to him, saying: 

“You won’t throw stones at it any more, will you?” 

“How long have you been there?” 

“All the time. You won’t throw any more stones, will 
you?” 

“T wanted to see if I could make it be quite gone off the 
pond,” he said. 

“Yes, it was horrible, really. Why should you hate the 
moon? It hasn’t done you any harm, has it?” 

“Was it hate?” he said. 

And they were silent for a few minutes. 

“When did you come back?” she said. 

“To-day.” 

“Why did you never write?” 

“T could find nothing to say.” 

“Why was there nothing to say?” 

“T don’t know. Why are there no daffodils now?” 

“AT G.?? 

Again there was a space of silence. Ursula looked at the 
moon. It had gathered itself together, and was quivering 
slightly. 

“Was it good for you, to be alone?” she asked. 

“Perhaps. Not that I know much. But I got over a good 
deal. Did you do anything important?” 

“No. I looked at England, and thought I’d done with it.” 

“Why England?” he asked in surprise. 

“T don’t know, it came like that.” 


284 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Tt isn’t a question of nations,” he said. “France is far 
worse.” 

“Yes, I know. I felt I’d done with it all.” 

They went and sat down on the roots of the trees, in the 
shadow. And being silent, he remembered the beauty of her 
eyes, which were sometimes filled with light, like spring, suf- 
fused with wonderful promise. So he said to her, slowly, with 
difficulty. 

“There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would 
give me.” It was as if he had been thinking of this for some 
time. 

She was startled, she seemed to leap clear of him. Yet also 
she was pleased. 

“What kind of a light?” she asked. 

But he was shy, and did not say any more. So the moment 
passed for this time. And gradually a feeling of sorrow came 
over her. 

“My life is unfulfilled,” she said. 

“Yes,” he answered briefly, not wanting to hear this. 

“And I feel as if nobody could ever really love me,” she said. 

But he did not answer. 

“You think, don’t you,” she said slowly, “that I only want 
physical things? It isn’t true. I want you to serve my spirit.” 

“I know you do. I know you don’t want physical things 
by themselves. But, I want you to give me—to give your 
spirit to me—that golden light which is you—which you don’t 
know—give it me—” 

After a moment’s silence she replied: 

“But how can I, you don’t love me! You only want your 
own ends. You don’t want to serve me, and yet you want me 
to serve you. It is so one-sided!” 

It was a great effort to him to maintain this conversation, 
and to press for the thing he wanted from her, the surrender 
of her spirit. 

“Tt is different,” he said. ‘The two kinds of service are so 
different. I serve you in another way—not through yyourself,— 
somewhere else. But I want us to be together without bother- 
ing about ourselves—to be really together because we are to- 


ae 


MOONY 285 


gether, as if it were a phenomenon, not a thing we have to 
maintain by our own effort.” 

“No,” she said, pondering. “You are just egocentric. You 
never have any enthusiasm, you never come out with any spark 
towards me. You want yourself, really, and your own affairs. 
And you want me just to be there, to serve you.” 

But this only made him shut off from her. 

“Ah well,” he said, “words make no matter, any way. The 
thing is between us, or it isn’t.” 

“You don’t even love me,” she cried. 

“T do,” he said angrily. “But I want—” His mind saw 
again the lovely golden light of spring transfused through her 
eyes, as through some wonderful window. And he wanted 
her to be with him there, in this world of proud indifference. 
But what was the good of telling her he wanted this company 
in proud indifference? What was the good of talking, any way? 
It must happen beyond the sound of words. It was merely 
ruinous to try to work her by conviction. This was a paradisal 
bird that could never be netted, it must fly by itself to the 
heart. 

“T always think I am going to be loved—and then I am let 
down. You don’t love me, you know. You don’t want to 
serve me. You only want yourself.” 

A shiver of rage went over his veins, at this repeated: 

“You don’t want to serve me.” All the paradisal disappeared 
from him. 

“No,” he said irritated, “I don’t want to serve you, because 
there is nothing there to serve. What you want me to serve, 
is nothing, mere nothing. It isn’t even you, it is your mere 
female quality. And I wouldn’t give a straw for your female 
ego—it’s a rag doll.” | 

“Ha!” she laughed in mockery. “That’s all you think of 
me, is it? And then you have the impudence to say you love 
me!” 

She rose in anger, to go home. 

“You want the paradisal unknowing,” she said, turning 
round on him as he still sat half-visible in the shadow. “I 
know what that means, thank you. You want me to be your 


286 WOMEN IN LOVE 


thing, never to criticise you or to have anything to say for 
myself. You want me to be a mere thing for you! No thank 
you! Jf you want that, there are plenty of women who will 
give it to you. There are plenty of women who will lie down 
for you to walk over them—go to them then, if that’s what 
you want—go to them.” 

“No,” he said, outspoken with anger. “I want you to drop 
your assertive will, your frightened apprehensive self-insistence, 
that is what I want. I want you to trust yourself so implicitly, 
that you can let yourself go.” 

“Let nayself go!” she re-echoed in mockery. “J can let 
myself go, easily enough. It is you who can’t let yourself go, 
it is you who hang on to yourself as if it were your only treas- 
ure. You—vyou are the Sunday school teacher—You—you 
preacher.” 

The amount of truth that was in this made him stiff and 
unheeding of her. 

“T don’t mean let yourself go in the Dionysic ecstatic way,” 
he said. “I know you can do that. But I hate ecstasy, 
Dionysic or any other. It’s like going round in a squirrel 
cage. I want you not to care about yourself, just to be there 
and not to care about yourself, not to insist—be glad and sure 
and indifferent.” | 

“Who insists?” she mocked. ‘Who is it that keeps on insist- 
ing? It isn’t mel” 

There was a weary, mocking bitterness in her voice. He 
was silent for some time. 

“T know,” he said. “While ever either of us insists to the 
other, we are all wrong. But there we are, the accord doesn’t 
come.” 

They sat in stillness under the shadow of the trees by the 
bank. The night was white around them, they were in the 
darkness, barely conscious. 

Gradually, the stillness and peace came over them. She put 
her hand tentatively on his. Their hands clasped softly and 
silently, in peace. 

“Tyo you really love me?” she said. 

He laughed. 


MOONY 287 


“T call that your war-cry,” he replied, amused. 

“Why!” she cried, amused and really wondering. 

“Your insistence—Your war-cry—A Brangwen, A Brang- 
wen, —an old battle-cry. Yours is ‘Do you love me? Yield 
knave, or die.’ ” 

“No,” she said, pleading, “not like that. Not like that. 
But I must know that you love me, mustn’t I?” 

“Well, then, know it and have done with it.” 

“But do you?” 

“Ves, I do. I love you, and I know it’s final. It is final, 
so why say any more about it.” 

She was silent for some moments, in delight and doubt. 

“Are you sure?” she said, nestling happily near to him. 

“Quite sure—so now have done—accept it and have done.” 

She was nestled quite close to him. 

“Fave done with what?” she murmured, happily. 

“With bothering,” he said. 

She clung nearer to him. He held her close, and kissed her 
softly, gently. It was such peace and heavenly freedom, just 
to fold her and kiss her gently, and not to have any thoughts 
or any desires or any will, just to be still with her, to be per- 
fectly still and together, in a peace that was not sleep, but 
content in bliss. To be content in bliss, without desire or 
insistence anywhere, this was heaven: to be together in happy 
stillness. 

For a long time she nestled to him, and he kissed her ._ 
softly, her hair, her face, her ears, gently, softly, like dew 
falling. But this warm breath on her ears disturbed her again, 
kindled the old destructive fires. She cleaved to him, and he 
could feel his blood changing like quicksilver. 

“But we'll be still, shall we?” he said. 

“Yes,” she said, as if submissively. 

And she continued to nestle against him. 

But in a little while she drew away and looked at him. 

“T must be going home,” she said. 

“Must you—how sad,” he replied. 

She leaned forward and put up her mouth to be kissed. 

“Are you really sad?” she murmured, smiling. 


288 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Ves,” he said, “I wish we could stay as we were, always.” 

“Always! Do you?” she murmured, as he kissed her. 
And then, out of a full throat, she crooned “Kiss me! Kiss 
me!” And she cleaved close to him. He kissed her many 
times. But he too had his idea and his will. He wanted only 
gentle communion, no other, no passion now. So that soon 
she drew away, put on her hat and went home. 

The next day, however, he felt wistful and yearning. He 
thought he had been wrong, perhaps. Perhaps he had been 
wrong to go to her with an idea of what he wanted. Was it 
really only an idea, or was it the interpretation of a profound 
yearning? If the latter, how was it he was always talking 
about sensual fulfilment? The two did not agree very well. 

Suddenly he found himself face to face with a situation. 
It was as simple as this: fatally simple. On the one hand, he 
knew he did not want a further sensual experience—some- 
thing deeper, darker, than ordinary life could give. He re- 
membered the African fetishes he had seen at Halliday’s so 
often. There came back to him one, a statuette about two 
feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure from West Africa, in dark 
wood, glossy and suave. It was a woman, with hair dressed 
high, like a melon-shaped dome. He remembered her vividly: 
she was one of his soul’s intimates. Her body was long and 
elegant, her face was crushed tiny like a beetle’s, she had rows 
of round heavy collars, like a column of quoits, on her neck. 
He remembered her: her astonishing cultured elegance, her 
diminished, beetle face, the astounding long elegant body, on 
short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so weighty 
and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what 
he himself did not know. She had thousands of years of 
purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. It 
must have been thousands of years since her race had died, 
mystically: that is, since the relation between the senses and 
the outspoken mind had broken, leaving the experience all in 
one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years ago, that 
which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these 
Africans: the goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation 
and productive happiness must have lapsed, leaving the single 


MOONY 289 


a impulse for knowledge in one sort, mindless progressive knowl- 


ie edge through the senses, knowledge arrested and ending in 


_ the senses, mystic knowledge in disintegration and dissolu- 
| tion, knowledge such as the beetles have, which live purely 
within the world of corruption and cold dissolution. This 
was why her face looked like a beetle’s: this was why the 
Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the 
principle of knowledge in dissolution and corruption. 

There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: 
after that point when the soul in intense suffering breaks, 
breaks away from its organic hold like a leaf that falls. We 
fall from the connection with life and hope, we lapse from 
pure integral being, from creation and liberty, and we fall into 
the long, long African process of purely sensual understanding, 
knowledge in the mystery of dissolution. 

He realised how that this is a long process—thousands of 
years it takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He 
realised that there were great mysteries to be unsealed, sen- 
sual, mindless, , ‘dreadful mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. 
How far, in their inverted culture, had these West Africans 
gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very, very far. Birkin re- 
called again the female figure: the elongated, long, long body, 
the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, the long, imprisoned 
neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle’s. This was 
far beyond any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far 
beyond the scope of phallic investigation. 

There remained this way, this awful African process, to be 
fulfilled. It would be done differently by the white races. 
The white races, having the arctic north behind them, the vast 
abstraction of ice and snow, would fulfil a mystery of ice- 
destructive knowledge, snow-abstract annihilation. Whereas 
the West Africans, controlled by the burning death-abstrac- 
tion of the Sahara, had been fulfilled in sun-destruction, the 
putrescent mystery of Sun-rays. 

Was this then all that remained? Was there left now 
nothing but to break off from the happy creative being, was 
the time up? Is our day of creative life finished? Does there 
remain to us only the strange, awful afterwards of the knowl- 


290 WOMEN IN LOVE 


edge in dissolution, the African knowledge, but different in us, 
who are blond and blue-eyed from the north? 

Birkin thought of Gerald. He was one of these strange 
white wonderful demons from the north, fulfilled in the de- 
structive frost mystery. And was he fated to pass away in 
this knowledge, this one process of frost-knowledge, death by 
perfect cold? Was he a messenger, an omen of the universal 
dissolution into whiteness and snow? 

Birkin was frightened. He was tired, too, when he haa 
reached this length of speculation. Suddenly his strange, 
strained attention gave way, he could not attend to these 
mysteries any more. There was another way, the way of free- 
dom. ‘There was the paradisal entry into pure, single being, 
the individual soul taking precedence over love and desire 
for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state 
of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the 
permanent connection with others, and with the other, sub- 
mits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own 
proud individual singleness, even while it loves and yields. 

There was the other way, the remaining way. And he must 
run to follow it. He thought of Ursula, how sensitive and 
delicate she really was, her skin so over-fine, as if one skin 
were wanting. She was really so marvellously gentle and 
sensitive. Why did he ever forget it? He must go to her at 
once. He must ask her to marry him. They must marry at 
once, and so make a definite pledge, enter into a definite com- 
munion. He must set out at once and ask her, this moment. 
There was no moment to spare. 

He drifted on swiftly to Beldover, half-unconscious of his 
own movement. He saw the town on the slope of the hill, not 
straggling, but as if walled-in with the straight, final streets 
of miners’ dwellings, making a great square, and it looked like 
Jerusalem to his fancy. The world was all strange and 
transcendent. | 

Rosalind opened the door to him. She started slightly, as 
a young girl will, and said: 

“Oh, I'll tell father.” 

With which she disappeared, leaving Birkin in the hall, 


Se re a ee Se ee 


= —— 


MOONY 291 


looking at some reproductions from Picasso, lately introduced 


, by Gudrun. He was admiring the almost wizard, sensuous ap- 
_ prehension of the earth, when Will Brangwen appeared, rolling 


down his shirt sleeves. 
“Well,” said Brangwen, “I’ll get a coat.’ And he too dis- 


_ appeared for a moment. Then he returned, and opened the 
_ door of the drawing-room, saying: 


“You must excuse me, I was just doing a bit of work in 
the shed. Come inside, will you.” 

Birkin entered and sat down. He looked at the bright, 
reddish face of the other man, at the narrow brow and the 
very bright eyes, and at the rather sensual lips that unrolled 
wide and expansive under the black cropped moustache. How 
curious it was that this was a human being! What Brangwen 
thought himself to be, how meaningless it was, confronted with 
the reality of him. Birkin could see only a strange, inex- 
plicable almost patternless collection of passions and desires 
and suppressions and traditions and mechanical ideas, all cast 
unfused and disunited into this slender, bright-faced man of 
nearly fifty, who was as unresolved now as he was at twenty, 
and as uncreated. How could he be the parent of Ursula, 
when he was not created himself. He was not a parent. A 
slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but the 
spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from 
any ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is 
the child of the mystery, or it is uncreated. 

“The weather’s not so bad as it has been,” said Brangwen, 
after waiting a moment. There was no connection between 
the two men. 

“No,” said Birkin. “It was full moon two days ago.” 

“Oh! You believe in the moon then, affecting the weather?” 

“No, I don’t think I do. I don’t really know enough 
about it.” 

“You know what they say? The moon and the weather 
may change together, but the change of the moon won’t 
change the weather.” 

“Ts that it?” said Birkin. “I hadn’t heard it.” 

There was a pause. Then Birkin said: 


292 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Am I hindering you? I called to see Ursula, really. Is 
she at home?” 

“I don’t believe she is. I believe she’s gone to the library. 
T’ll just see.” 

Birkin could hear him enquiring in the dining room. 

“No,” he said, coming back. “But she won’t be long. 
You wanted to speak to her?” 

Birkin looked across at the other man with curious calm, 
clear eyes. 

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I wanted to ask her to 
marry me.” 

A point of light came on the golden-brown eyes of the 
elder man. 

“Q-oh?” he said, looking at Birkin, then dropping his eyes 
before the calm, steadily watching look of the other: “Was 
she expecting you then?” 

“No,” said Birkin. 

“No? I didn’t know anything of this sort was on foot—” 
Brangwen smiled awkwardly. 

Birkin looked back at him, and said to himself: “I wonder 
why it should be ‘on foot!’ ” Aloud he said: 

“No, it’s perhaps rather sudden.” At which, thinking of 
his relationship with Ursula, he added—“but I don’t know—” 

“Quite sudden, is it? Oh!” said Brangwen, rather baffled 
and annoyed. 

“In one way,” replied Birkin, “—not in another.” 

There was a moment’s pause, after which Brangwen said: 

“Well, she pleases herself—” 

“Oh yes!” said Birkin, calmly. 

A vibration came into Brangwen’s strong voice, as he re- 
plied: 

“Though I shouldn’t want her to be in too big a hurry, 
either. It’s no good looking round afterwards, when it’s too 
late.” 

“Oh, it need never be too late,” said Birkin, “as far as 
that goes.” 

“How do you mean?” asked the father. 


MOONY 293 


a “Tf one repents being married, the marriage is at an end,” 
said Birkin. 
“You think so?” 

“Ves,” 

“Ay, well, that may be your way of looking at it.” 

Birkin, in silence, thought to himself: “So it may. As for 
your way of looking at it, William Brangwen, it needs a little 
explaining.” 

“T suppose,” said Brangwen, “you know what sort of people 
we are? What sort of a bringing-up she’s had?” 

“« ‘She,’ ” thought Birkin to himself, remembering his child- 
hood’s corrections, “‘is the cat’s mother.” 

“Do I know what sort of a bringing-up she’s ‘hhade” he said 
aloud. 

He seemed to annoy Brangwen intentionally. . 

“Well,” he said, “she’s had everything that’s right for a girl 
to have—as far as possible, as far as we could give it her.” 

“T’m sure she has,” said Birkin, which caused a perilous 
full-stop. The father was becoming exasperated. There was 
something naturally irritant to him in Birkin’s mere presence. 

“And I don’t want to see her going back on it all,” he said, 
in a clanging voice. 

“Why?” said Birkin. 

This monosyllable exploded in Brangwen’s brain like a 
shot. 

“Why! J don’t believe in your new-fangled ways and new- 
fangled ideas—in and out like a frog in a gallipot. It would 
never do for me.” 

Birkin watched him with steady emotionless eyes. The 
radical antagonism in the two men was rousing. 

“Yes, but are my ways and ideas new-fangled?” asked 
Birkin. : 

“Are they?” Brangwen caught himself up. ‘I’m not speak- 
ing of you in particular,” he said. “What I mean is that my 
children have been brought up to think and do according to 
the religion I was brought up in myself, and I don’t want to 
see them going away from that.” 

There was a dangerous pause. 


204 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“And beyond that—?” asked Birkin. 

The father hesitated, he was in a nasty position. 

“Eh? What do you mean? All I want to say is that my 
daughter”—he tailed off into silence, overcome by futility. 
He knew that in some way he was off the track. 

“Of course,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to hurt anybody 
or influence anybody. Ursula does exactly as she pleases.” 

There was a complete silence, because of the utter failure 
in mutual understanding. Birkin felt bored. Her father was 
not a coherent human being, he was a roomful of old echoes. 
The eyes of the younger man rested on the face of the elder. 
Brangwen looked up, and saw Birkin looking at him. His face 
was covered with inarticulate anger and humiliation and sense 
of inferiority in strength. 

“And as for beliefs, that’s one thing,” he said. “But I’d 
rather see my daughters dead to-morrow than that they should 
be at the beck and call of the first man that likes to come and 
whistle for them.” | 

A queer painful light came into Birkin’s eyes. 

“As to that,” he said, “I only know that it’s much more 
likely that it’s I who am at the beck and call of the woman, than 
she at mine.” 

Again there was a pause. The father was somewhat be- 
wildered. 

“T know,” he said, “she'll please herseli—she always has 
done. I’ve done my best for them, but that doesn’t matter. 
They’ve got themselves to please, and if they can help it they'll 
please nobody but themselves. But she’s a right to consider 
her mother, and me as well—” 

Brangwen was thinking his own thoughts. 

“And I tell you this much, I would rather bury them, than 
see them getting into a lot of loose ways such as you see every- 
where nowadays. I’d rather bury them—” 

“Yes but, you see,” said Birkin slowly, rather wearily, bored 
again by this new turn, “they won’t give either you or me the 
chance to bury them, because they’re not to be buried.” 

Brangwen looked at him in a sudden flare of impotent 
anger. 


a 


: 
& 
u 
cf 


MOONY 295: 


“Now, Mr. Birkin,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve 
come here for, and I don’t know what you’re asking for. But 
my daughters are my daughters—and it’s my business to look 
after them while I can.” 

Birkin’s brows knitted suddenly, his eyes concentrated in 
mockery. But he remained perfectly stiff and still. There 
was a pause. 

“I’ve nothing against your marrying Ursula,” Brangwen 
began at length. “It’s got nothing to do with me, she’ll do 
as she likes, me or no me.” 

Birkin turned away, looking out of the window and letting 
go his consciousness. After all, what good was this? It was 
hopeless to keep it up. He would sit on till Ursula came 
home, then speak to her, then go away. He would not accept 
trouble at the hands of her father. It was all unnecessary, 
and he himself need not have provoked it. 

The two men sat in complete silence, Birkin almost uncon- 
scious of his own whereabouts. He had come to ask her to 
marry him—vwell, then, he would wait on, and ask her. . As 
for what she said, whether she accepted or not, he did not 
think about it. He would say what he had come to say, and 
that was all he was conscious of. He accepted the complete 
insignificance of this household, for him. But everything 
now was as if fated. He could see one thing ahead, and no 
more. From the rest, he was absolved entirely for the time 
being. It had to be left to fate and chance to resolve the 
issues. 

At length they heard the gate. They saw her coming up 
the steps with a. bundle of books under her arm. Her face 
was bright and abstracted as usual, with the abstraction, that 
look of being not quite there, not quite present to the facts 
of reality, that galled her father so much. She had a madden- 
ing faculty of assuming a light of her own, which excluded the 
reality, and within which she looked radiant as if in sunshine. 

They heard her go into the dining room, and drop her arm- 
ful of books on the table. | 

“Did you bring me that Girl’s Own?” cried Rosalind. 


296 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Yes, I brought it. But I forgot which one it was you 
wanted.” 

“You would,” cried Rosalind angrily. “It’s right for a 
wonder.” 

Then they heard her say something in a cits 4 tone. 

“Where?” cried Ursula. 

Again her sister’s voice was muffled. 

Brangwen opened the door, and called, in his oO brazen 
voice: 

“Ursula.” 

She appeared in a moment, wearing her hat. 

“Oh, how do you do!” she cried, seeing Birkin, and all 
dazzled as if taken by surprise. He wondered at her, know- 
ing she was aware of his presence. She had her queer, radiant, 
breathless manner, as if confused by the actual world, unreal 
to it, having a complete bright world of her self alone. 

“Have I interrupted a conversation?” she asked. 

“No, only a complete silence,” said Birkin. 

“Oh,” said Ursula, vaguely, absent. Their presence was not 
vital to her, she was withheld, she did not take them in. It 
was a subtle insult that never failed to exasperate her father, 

“Mr. Birkin came to speak to you, not to me,” said her 
father. 

“Oh, did he!” she exclaimed eet. a as if it did not con- 
cern her. Then, recollecting herself, she turned to him rather 
radiantly, but still quite superficially, and said: “Was it any- 
thing special?” 

“T hope so,”’ he said, ironically. 

“To propose to you, according to all accounts,” said her 
father. 

“Oh,” said Ursula. 

“Oh,” mocked her father, imitating her. “Have you noth- 
ing more to say?” 

She winced as if violated. 

“Did you really come to propose to me?” she asked of 
Birkin, as if it were a joke. 

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I came to propose.” He seemed 
to fight shy of the last word. 


\ 
7 
4 
: 
: 


MOONY 297 


“Did you?” she cried, with her vague radiance. He might 
have been saying anything whatsoever. She seemed pleased. 

“Yes,” he povmileha ar “I wanted to—I wanted you to agree 
to marry me.’ 

She looked at him. His eyes were flickering with mixed 
lights, wanting something of her, yet not wanting it. She 
shrank a little, as if she were exposed to his eyes, and as if it 
were a pain to her. She darkened, her soul clouded over, she 
turned aside. She had been driven out of her own radiant, 
single world. And she dreaded contact, it was almost un- 
natural to her at these times. 

“Yes,” she said vaguely, in a doubting, absent voice. 

Birkin’s heart contracted swiftly, in a sudden fire of bitter- 
ness. It all meant nothing to her. He had been mistaken 
again. She was in some self-satisfied world of her own. He 
and his hopes were accidentals, violations to her. It drove 
her father to a pitch of mad exasperation. He had had to put 
up with this all his life, from her. 

“Well, what do you say?” he cried. 

She winced. Then she panecs down at her father, half- 
frightened, and she said: 

“T didn’t speak, did I?” as if she were afraid she might have 
committed herself. 

“No,” said her father, exasperated. “But you needn’t look 
like an idiot. You’ve got your wits, haven’t you?” 

She ebbed away in silent hostility. 

“T’ve got my wits, what does that mean?” she repeated, in 
a sullen voice of antagonism. 

“You heard what was asked you, didn’t you?” cried her 
father in anger. 

“Of course I heard.” 

“Well, then, can’t you answer?” thundered her father. 

“Why should I??? 

At the impertinence of this retort, he went stiff. But he 
said nothing. 

“No,” said Birkin, to help out the occasion, “‘there’s no need 
to answer at once. You can say when you like.” 

Her eyes flashed with a powerful light. . 


298 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Why should I say anything?” she cried. “You do this 
off your own bat, it has nothing to do with me. Why do you 
both want to bully me?” 

“Bully you! Bully you!” cried her father, in bitter, ran- 
corous anger. “Bully you! Why, it’s a pity you can’t be 
bullied into some sense and decency. Bully you! Yow’ll see 
to that, you self-willed creature.” 

She stood suspended in the middle of the room, her face 
glimmering and dangerous. She was set in satisfied defiance. 
Birkin looked up at her. He too was angry. 

“But no-one is bullying you,” he said, in a very soft dan- 
gerous voice also. . 

“Oh, yes,” she cried. “You both want to force me into 
something.” 

“That is an illusion of yours,” he said ironically. 

“Tllusion!” cried her father. ‘A self-opinionated fool, that’s 
what she is.” 

Birkin rose, saying: 

“However, we'll leave it for the time being.” 

And without another word, he walked out of the house. 

“You fool! You fool!’ her father cried to her, with ex- 
treme bitterness. She left the room, and went upstairs, singing 
to herself. But she was terribly fluttered, as after some dread- 
ful fight. From her window, she could see Birkin going up 
the road. He went in such a blithe drift of rage, that her 
mind wondered over him. He was ridiculous, but she was 
afraid of him. She was as if escaped from some danger. 

Her father sat below, powerless in humiliation and chagrin. 
It was as if he were possessed with all the devils, after one of 
these unaccountable conflicts with Ursula. He hated her as 
if his only reality were in hating her to the last degree. He 
had all hell in his heart. But he went away, to escape him- 
self. He knew he must despair, yield, give in to despair, and 
have done. 

Ursula’s face closed, she completed herself against them all. 
Recoiling upon herself, she became hard and self-completed, 
like a jewel. She was bright and invulnerable, quite free and 
happy, perfectly liberated in her self-possession. Her father 


MOONY 299 


had to learn not to see her blithe obliviousness, or it would 
have sent him mad. She was so radiant with all things, in her 
possession of perfect hostility. | 

She would go on now for days like this, in this bright frank 
state of seemingly pure spontaneity, so essentially oblivious 
of the existence of anything but herself, but so ready and 
facile in her interest. Ah it was a bitter thing for a man to 
be near her, and her father cursed his fatherhood. But he 
must learn not to see her, not to know. 

She was perfectly stable in resistance when she was in this 
state: so bright and radiant and attractive in her pure opposi- 
tion, so very pure, and yet mistrusted by everybody, disliked 
on every hand. It was her voice, curiously clear and repellant, 
that gave her away. Only Gudrun was in accord with her. 
It was at these times that the intimacy between the two sisters 
was most complete, as if their intelligence were one. They 
felt a strong, bright bond of understanding between them, sur- 
passing everything else. And during all these days of blind 
bright abstraction and intimacy of his two daughters, the 
father seemed to breathe an air of death, as if he were de- 
stroyed in his very being. He was irritable to madness, he 
could not rest, his daughters seemed to be destroying him. 
But he was inarticulate and helpless against them. He was 
forced to breathe the air of his own death. He cursed them 
in his soul, and only wanted, that they should be removed from 
him. 

They continued radiant in their easy female transcendancy, 
beautiful to look at. They exchanged confidences, they were 
intimate in their revelations to the last degree, giving each 
other at last every secret. They withheld nothing, they told 
everything, till they were over the border of evil. And they 
armed each other with knowledge, they extracted the subtlest 
flavours from the apple of knowledge. It was curious how 
their knowledge was complementary, that of each to that of 
the other. 

Ursula saw her men as sons, pitied their yearning and ad- 
mired their courage, and wondered over them as a mother 
wonders over her child, with a certain delight in their novelty. 


300 WOMEN IN LOVE 


But to Gudrun, they were the opposite camp. She feared 
them and despised them, and respected their activities even 
overmuch. ~ 

“Of course,” she said easily, “there is a quality of life in 
Birkin which is quite remarkable. There is an extraordinary 
rich spring of life in him, really amazing, the way he can give 
himself to things. But there are so many things in life that 
he simply doesn’t know. Either he is not aware of their ex- 
istence at all, or he dismisses them as merely negligible— 
things which are vital to the other person. In a way, he is not 
clever enough, he is too intense in spots.” 

“Yes,” cried Ursula, “too much of a preacher. He is really 
a priest.” | 

“Exactly! He can’t hear what anybody else has to say— 
he simply cannot hear. His own voice is so loud.” 

“Yes. He cries you down.” 

“He cries you down,” repeated Gudrun. “And by mere 
force of violence. And of course it is hopeless. Nobody is 
convinced by violence. It makes talking to him impossible— 
and living with him I should think would be more than im-. 
possible.” 

“You don’t think one could live with him?” asked Ursula. 

“T think it would be too wearing, too exhausting. One 
would be shouted down every time, and rushed into his way 
without any choice. He would want to control you entirely. 
He cannot allow that there is any other mind than his own. 
And then the real clumsiness of his mind, is its lack of self- 
criticism. No, I think it would be perfectly intolerable.” 

“Yes,” assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with 
Gudrun. ‘The nuisance is,” she said, “that one would find 
almost any man intolerable after a fortnight.” 

“Tt’s perfectly dreadful,” said Gudrun. “But Birkin—he 
is too positive. He couldn’t bear it if you called your soul 
your own. Of him that is strictly true.” 

“Ves,” said Ursula. “You must have his soul.” 

“Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?” ‘This 
was all so true, that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her 
soul with ugly distaste. 


MOONY 301 


She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through 
her, in the most barren of misery. 

Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished 
life off so thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final. 
As a matter of fact, even if it were as Gudrun said, about 
Birkin, other things were true as well. But Gudrun would 
draw two lines under him and cross him out like an account 
that is settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled, 
done with. And it was such a lie. This finality of Gudrun’s, 
this dispatching of people and things in a sentence, it was all 
such a lie. Ursula began to revolt from her sister. 

One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a 
robin sitting on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The 
sisters stood to look at him. An ironical smile flickered on 
Gudrun’s face. 

“Doesn’t he feel important?” smiled Gudrun. 

“Doesn’t he!” exclaimed Ursula, with a little ironical 
grimace. “Isn’t he a little Lloyd George of the air!” 

“Tsn’t he! Little Lloyd George of the air! That’s just 
what they are,” cried Gudrun in delight. Then for days, 
Ursula saw the persistent, obtrusive birds as stout, short 
politicians lifting up their voices from the platform, little 
men who must make themselves heard at any cost. 

But even from this there came the revulsion. Some yellow- 
hammers suddenly shot along the road in front of her. And 
they looked to her so uncanny and inhuman, like flaring yellow 
barbs shooting through the air on some weird, living errand, 
that she said to herself: “After all, it is impudence to call 
them little Lloyd Georges. They are really unknown to us, 
they are the unknown forces. It is impudence to look at them 
as if they were the same as human beings. They are of an- 
other world. How stupid anthropomorphism is! Gudrun is 
really impudent, insolent, making herself the measure of every- 
thing, making everything come down to human standards. 
Rupert is quite right, human beings are boring, painting the 
universe with their own image. The universe is non-human, 
thank God.” It seemed to her irreverence, destructive of all 
true life, to make little Lloyd Georges of the birds. It was 


302 WOMEN IN LOVE 


such a lie towards the robins, and such a defamation. Yet 
she had done it herself. But under Gudrun’s influence: so 
she exonerated herself. 

So she withdrew away from Gudrun and from that which 
she stood for, she turned in spirit towards Birkin again. She 
had not seen him since the fiasco of his proposal. She did 
not want to, because she did not want the question of her 
acceptance thrust upon her. She knew what Birkin meant 
when he asked her to marry him; vaguely, without putting it 
into speech, she knew. She knew what kind of love, what 
kind of surrender he wanted. And she was not at all sure 
that this was the kind of love that she herself wanted. She 
was not at all sure that it was this mutual unison in separate- 
ness that she wanted. She wanted unspeakable intimacies. 
She wanted to have him, utterly, finally to have him as her 
own, oh, so unspeakably, in intimacy. To drink him down— 
ah, like a life-draught. She made great professions, to her- 
self, of her willingness to warm his foot-soles between her 
breasts, after the fashion of the nauseous Meredith poem. 
But only on condition that he, her lover, loved her absolutely, 
with complete self-abandon. And subtly enough, she knew 
he would never abandon himself finally to her. He did not 
believe in final self-abandonment. He said it openly. It was 
his challenge. She was prepared to fight him for it. For she- 
believed that love far surpassed the individual. He said the 
individual was more than love, or than any relationship. For 
him, the bright, single soul accepted love as one of its condi- 
tions, a condition of its own equilibrium. She believed that 
love was everything. Man must render himself up to her. 
He must be quaffed to the dregs by her. Let him be ker man 
utterly, and she in return would be his humble slave—whether 
she wanted it or not. 


CHAPTER XX 
GLADIATORIAL 


AFTER the fiasco of the proposal, Birkin had hurried blindly 
away from Beldover, in a whirl of fury. He felt he had been 
a complete fool, that the whole scene had been a farce of the 
first water. But that did not trouble him at all. He was 
deeply, mockingly angry that Ursula persisted always in this 
old cry: “Why do you want to bully me?” and in her bright, 
insolent abstraction. . 

He went straight to Shortlands. There he found Gerald 
standing with his back to the fire, in the library, as motion- 
less as a man is, who is completely and emptily restless, utterly 
hollow. He had done all the work he wanted to do—and 
now there was nothing. He could go out in the car, he could 
run to town. But he did not want to go out in the car, he 
did not want to run to town, he did not want to call on the 
Thirlbys. He was suspended motionless, in an agony of in- 
ertia, like a machine that is without power. 

This was very bitter to Gerald, who had never known what 
boredom was, who had gone from activity to activity, never 
at a loss. Now, gradually, everything seemed to be stopping 
in him. He did not want any more to do the things that 
offered. Something dead within him just refused to respond 
to any suggestion. He cast over in his mind, what it would 
be possible to do, to save himself from this misery of nothing- 
ness, relieve the stress of this hollowness. And there were 
only three things left, that would rouse him, make him live. 
One was to drink or smoke hashish, the other was to be 
soothed by Birkin, and the third was women. And there was 
_ no-one for the moment to drink with. Nor was there a woman. 
And he knew Birkin was out. So there was nothing to do but 
to bear the stress of his own emptiness. 

303 


304 WOMEN IN LOVE 


When he saw Birkin his face lit up in a sudden, wonderful 
smile. 

“By God, Rupert,” he said, ‘“I’d just come to the conclusion 
that nothing in the world mattered except somebody to take 
the edge off one’s being alone: the right somebody.” 

The smile in his eyes was very astonishing, as he looked 
at the other man. It was the pure gleam of relief. His face 
was pallid and even haggard. 

“The right woman, I suppose you mean,” said Birkin spite- 
fully. 

“Of course, for choice. Failing that, an amusing man.” 

He laughed as he said it. Birkin sat down near the fire. 

“What were you doing?” he asked. 

“I? Nothing. I’m in a bad way just now, everything’s on 
edge, and I can neither work nor play. I don’t know whether 
it’s a sign of old age, I’m sure.” 

“You mean you are bored?” 

“Bored, I don’t know. I can’t apply myself. And I feel 
the devil is either very present inside me, or dead.” 

Birkin glanced up and looked in his eyes. 

“You should try hitting something,” he said. 

Gerald smiled. 

“Perhaps,” he said. “So long as it was something worth 
hitting.” 

“Quite!” said Birkin, in his soft voice. There was a long 
pause during which each could feel the presence of the other. 

“One has to wait,” said Birkin. 

“Ah God! Waiting! What are we waiting for?” 

“Some old Johnny says there are three cures for ennui, sleep, 
drink, and travel,” said Birkin. 

“All cold eggs,” said Gerald. ‘In sleep you dream, in drink 
you curse, and in travel you yell at a porter. No, work and 
love are the two. When you’re not at work you should be 
in love.” 

“Be it then,” said Birkin. 

“Give me the object,” said Gerald. ‘The possibilities of 
love exhaust themselves.” | 

“Do they? And then what?” 


SS. a a eee ae 


ee ee ee ee ee 


ee 


GLADIATORIAL 305 


“Then you die,” said Gerald. 

“So you ought,” said Birkin. 

“T don’t see it,” replied Gerald. He took his hands out of 
his trousers: pockets, and reached for a cigarette. He was 
tense and nervous. He lit the cigarette over a lamp, reaching 
forward and drawing steadily. He was dressed for dinner, as 
usual in the evening, although he was alone. 

“There’s a third one even to your two,” said Birkin. “Work, 
love, and fighting. You forget the fight.” 

“I suppose I do,” said Gerald. “Did you ever do any 
boxing—?” 

“No, I don’t think I did,” said Birkin. 

“Ay—” Gerald lifted his head and blew the smoke slowly 
into the air. 

“Why?” said Birkin. 

“Nothing. I thought we might have a round. It is perhaps 
true, that I want something to hit. It’s a suggestion.” 

“So you think you might as well hit me?” said Birkin. 

“Your Well—! Perhaps—! In a friendly kind of way, 
of course.” 

“Quite!” said Birkin, bitingly. 

Gerald stood leaning back against the mantel-piece. He 
looked down at Birkin, and his eyes flashed with a sort of 
terror like the eyes of a stallion, that are bloodshot and over- 
wrought, turned glancing backwards in a stiff terror. 

“T feel that if I don’t watch myself, I shall find myself doing 
something silly,” he said. 

“Why not do it?” said Birkin coldly. 

Gerald listened with quick impatience. He kept glancing 
down at Birkin, as if looking for something from the other 
man. 

“IT used to do some Japanese wrestling,” said Birkin. “A 
Jap lived in the same house with me in Heidelberg, and he 
taught me a little. But I was never much good at it.” 

“You did!” exclaimed Gerald. “That’s one of the things 
I’ve never even seen done. You mean jiu-jitsu, I suppose?” 

“Yes. But I am no good at those things—they don’t in- 
terest me,” 


306 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“They don’t? They do me. What’s the start?” 

“Tl show you what I can, if you like,” said Birkin. 

“You will?” A queer, smiling look tightened Gerald’s face 
for a moment, as he said, “Well, I’d like it very much.” 

“Then we'll try jiu-jitsu. Only you can’t do much in a 
starched shirt.” 

“Then let us strip, and do it properly. Hold a minute—” 
He rang the bell, and waited for the butler. 

“Bring a couple of sandwiches and a syphon;” he said to 
the man, “and then don’t trouble me any more albsaichity 
let anybody else.” 

The man went. Gerald turned to Birkin with his eyes 
lighted. 

“And you used to wrestle with a Jap?” he said. “Did you 
strip?” 

“‘Sometimes.” 

“You did! What was he like then, as a wrestler?” 

“Good, I believe. I am no judge. He was very quick and 
slippery and full of electric fire. It is a remarkable thing, 
what a curious sort of fluid force they seem to have in them, 
those people—not like a human grip—like a polyp—~7> 

Gerald nodded. 

“I should imagine so,” he said, “to look at them. They 
repel me, rather.” 

“Repel and attract, both. They are very repulsive when 
they are cold, and they look grey. But when they are hot 
and roused, there is a definite attraction—a curious kind of 
full electric fluid—like eels.” 

“Well—, yes—, probably.” 

The man brought in the tray and set it down. 

“Don’t come in any more,” said Gerald. 

The door closed. 

“Well, then,” said Gerald, “shall we strip and begin? Will 
you have a drink first?” 

“No, I don’t want one.” 

“Neither do I.” 

Gerald fastened the door and pushed the furniture aside. 
‘The room was large, there was plenty of space, it was thickly 


GLADIATORIAL 307 


carpeted. Then he quickly threw off his clothes, and waited 
for Birkin. The latter, white and thin, came over to him. 
Birkin was more a presence than a visible object; Gerald was 
aware of him completely, but not really visually. Whereas 
Gerald himself was concrete and noticeable, a piece of pure 
final substance, 

“Now,” said Birkin, “I will show you what IT learned, and 
what I remember. You let me take you so—” And his hands 
closed on the naked body of the other man. In another 
moment, he had Gerald swung over lightly and balanced 
against his knee, head downwards. Relaxed, Gerald sprang 
to his feet with eyes glittering. 

“That’s smart,” he said. ‘Now try again.” 

So the two men began to struggle together. They were very 
dissimilar. Birkin was tall and narrow, his bones were very 
thin and fine. Gerald was much heavier and more plastic. 
His bones were strong and round, his limbs were rounded, all 
his contours were beautifull:7-22d fully moulded. He seemed 
to stand with a proper, rich weight on the face of the earth, 
whilst Birkin seemed to have the centre of gravitation in his 
own middle. And Gerald had a rich, frictional kind of strength, 
rather mechanical, but sudden and invincible, whereas Birkin 
was abstract as to be almost intangible. He impinged invisibly 
upon the other man, scarcely seeming to touch him, like a gar- 
ment, and then suddenly piercing in a tense fine grip that 
seemed to penetrate into the very quick of Gerald’s being. 

They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips 
and throws, they became accustomed to each other, to each 
other’s rhythm, they got a kind of mutual physical under- 
standing. And then again they had a real struggle. They 
seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper against 
each other, as if they would break into a oneness. Birkin 
had a great subtle energy, that would press upon the other 
man with an uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon 
him. Then it would pass, and Gerald would heave free, with 
white, heaving, dazzling movements. 

So ‘the two men entwined and wrestled with each ties, 
working nearer and nearer. Both were white and clear, but 


308 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gerald flushed smart red where he was touched, and Birkin 
remained white and tense. He seemed to penetrate into 
Gerald’s more solid, more diffuse bulk, to interfuse his body 
through the body of the other, as if to bring it subtly into sub- 
jection, always seizing with some rapid necromantic fore- 
knowledge every motion of the other flesh, converting and 
counteracting it, playing upon the limbs and trunk of Gerald 
like some hard wind. It was as if Birkin’s whole physical in- 
telligence interpenetrated into Gerald’s body, as if his fine, 
sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the fuller man, 
like some potency, casting a fine net, a prison, through the 
muscles into the very depths of Gerald’s physical being. 

So they wrestled swiftly, rapturously, intent and mindless at 
last, two essential white figures working into a tighter closer 
oneness of struggle, with a strange, octopus-like knotting and 
flashing of limbs in the subdued light of the room; a tense 
white knot of flesh gripped in silence between the walls of old 
brown books. Now and again came a sharp gasp of breath, or 
a sound like a sigh, then the rapid thudding of movement on 
the thickly-carpeted floor, then the strange sound of flesh 
escaping under flesh. Often, in the white interlaced knot of 
violent living being that swayed silently, there was no head 
to be seen, only the swift, tight limbs, the solid white backs, 
the physical junction of two bodies clinched into oneness. 
Then would appear the gleaming, ruffled head of Gerald, as 
the struggle changed, then for a moment the dun-coloured, 
shadow-like head of the other man would lift vp from the 
conflict, the eyes wide and dreadful and sightless. 

At length Gerald lay back inert on the carpet, his breast 
rising in great slow panting, whilst Birkin kneeled over him, 
almost unconscious. Birkin was much more exhausted. He 
caught little, short breaths, he could scarcely breathe any 
more. The earth seemed to tilt and sway, and a complete 
darkness was coming over his mind. He did not know what 
happened. He slid forward quite unconscious, over Gerald, 
and Gerald did not notice. Then he was half-conscious again, 
aware only of the strange tilting and sliding of the world, 


a 


GLADIATORIAL 309 


The world was sliding, everything was sliding off into the 
darkness. And he was sliding, endlessly, endlessly away. 

He came to consciousness again, hearing an immense knock- 
ing outside. What could be happening, what was it, the great 
hammer-stroke resounding through the house? He did not 
know. And then it came to him that it was his own heart 
beating. But that seemed impossible, the noise was outside. 
No, it was inside himself, it was his own heart. And the beat- 
ing was painful, so strained, surcharged. He wondered if 
Gerald heard it. He did not know whether he were standing 
or lying or falling. 

When he realised that he had fallen prostrate upon Gerald’s 
body he wondered, he was surprised. But he sat up, steady- 
ing himself with his hand and waiting for his heart to become 
stiller and less painful. It hurt very much, and took away his 
consciousness. 

Gerald, however, was still less conscious than Birkin. They 
waited dimly, in a sort of not-being, for many uncounted, un- 
known minutes. 

“Of course—” panted Gerald, “I didn’t have to be rough— 
with you—I had to keep back—my force—” 

Birkin heard the sound as if his own spirit stood behind him, 
outside him, and listened to it. His body was in a trance of 
exhaustion, his spirit heard thinly. His body could not an- 
swer. Only he knew his heart was getting quieter. He was 
divided entirely between his spirit, which stood outside, and 
knew, and his body, that was a plunging, unconscious stroke 
of blood. 

“T could have thrown you—using violence—” panted Gerald. 
“But you beat me right enough.” 

“Yes,” said Birkin, hardening his throat and producing the 
words in the tension there, ‘“you’re much stronger than I—you 
could beat me—easily.” 

Then he relaxed again to the terrible plunging of his heart 
and his blood. 

“It surprised me,” panted Gerald, “what strength you’ve 
got. Almost supernatural.” 

“For a moment,” said Birkin. 


310 WOMEN IN LOVE 


He still heard as if it were his own disembodied spirit hear- 
ing, standing at some distance behind him. It drew nearer, 
however, his spirit. And the violent striking of blood in his 
chest was sinking quieter, allowing his mind to come back. 
He realised that he was leaning with all his weight on the 
soft body of the other man. It startled him, because he 
thought he had withdrawn. He recovered himself, and sat 
up. But he was still vague and unestablished. He put out 
his hand to steady himself. It touched the hand of Gerald, 
that was lying out on the floor. And Gerald’s hand closed 
warm and sudden over Birkin’s, they remained exhausted and 
breathless, the one hand clasped closely over the other. It 
was Birkin whose hand, in swift response, hed closed in a 
strong, warm clasp over the hand of the other. Gerald’s clasp 
had been sudden and momentaneous. 

The normal consciousness, however, was returning, ebbing 
back. Birkin could breathe almost naturally agaim. Gerald’s 
hand slowly withdrew, Birkin slowly, dazedly rose to his feet 
and went towards the table. He poured out a whiskey and 
soda. Gerald also came for a drink. 

“Tt was a real set-to, wasn’t it?” said Birkin, looking at 
Gerald with darkened eyes. 

“God, yes,” said Gerald. He looked at the fine body of 
the other man, and added: “It wasn’t too much for you, 
was it?” 

“No. One ought to wrestle and strive and be physically 
close. It makes one sane.” 

“You do think so?” 

“TI do. Don’t you?” 

“Yes,” said Gerald. 

There were long spaces of silence between their words. The 
wrestling had some deep meaning to them—an unfinished 
meaning. 

“We are mentally, spiritually intimate, therefore we should 
be more or less physically intimate too—it is more whole.” 

“Certainly it is,” said Gerald. Then he laughed pleasantly, 
adding: “It’s rather wonderful to me.” He stretched out his 
arms handsomely. 


GLADIATORIAL 311 


“Yes,” said Birkin. “I don’t know why one should have 
to justify oneself.” 

“No.” 

The two men began to dress. 

“T think also that you are beautiful,” said Birkin to Gerald, 
“and that is enjoyable too. One should enjoy what is given.” 

“You think I am beautiful—how do you mean, physically?” 
asked Gerald, his eyes glistening. 

“Ves. You have a northern kind of beauty, like light re- 
fracted from snow—and a beautiful, plastic form. . Yes, that 
is there to enjoy as well. We should enjoy everything.” 

Gerald laughed in his throat, and said: 

“That’s certainly one way of looking at it. I can say this 
much, I feel better. It has certainly helped me. Is this the 
Bruderschaft you wanted?” 

“Perhaps. Do you think this pledges anything?” 

“T don’t know,” laughed Gerald. 

“At any rate, one feels freer and more open now—and that 
is what we want.” 

“Certainly,” said Gerald. 

They drew to the fire, with the decanters and the glasses 
and the food. 

“T always eat a little before I go to bed,” said Gerald. “I 
sleep better.” 

“T should not sleep so well,” said Birkin. 

“No? There you are, we are not alike. I'll put a dressing- 
gown on.” Birkin remained alone, looking at the fire. His 
mind had reverted to Ursula. She semed to return again into 
his consciousness. Gerald came down wearing a gown of 
broad-barred, thick black-and-green silk, brilliant and striking. 

“You are very fine,” said Birkin, looking at the full robe. 

“Tt was a caftan in Bokhara,” said Gerald. “TI like it.” 

“T like it too.” 

Birkin was silent, thinking how scrupulous Gerald was in 
his attire, how expensive too. He wore silk socks, and studs 
of fine workmanship, and silk underclothing, and silk braces. 
Curious! This was another of the differences between them. 


312 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Birkin was careless and unimaginative about his own ap- 
pearance. 

“Of course you,” said Gerald, as if he had been thinking; 
“there’s something curious about you. ‘You're curiously 
strong. One doesn’t expect it, it is rather surprising.” 

Birkin laughed. He was looking at the handsome figure of 
the other man, blond and comely in the rich robe, and he was 
half thinking of the difference between it and himseli—so 
different; as far, perhaps, apart as man from woman, yet in 
another direction. But really it was Ursula, it was the woman 
who was gaining ascendance over Birkin’s being, at this mo- 
ment. Gerald was becoming dim again, lapsing out of him. 

“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “I went and proposed to 
Ursula Brangwen to-night, that she should marry me.” 

He saw the blank shining wonder come over Gerald’s face. 

“You did?” 

“Yes. Almost formally—speaking first to her father, as 
it should be, in the world—though that was accident—or 
mischief.” 

Gerald ‘only stared in wonder, as if he did not grasp. 

“You don’t mean to say that you seriously went and asked 
her father to let you marry her?” 

“Yes,” said Birkin, “I did.” 

“What, had you spoken to her before about it, then?” 

“No, not a word. I suddenly thought I would go there and 
ask her—and her father happened to « come instead of her— 
so I asked him first.” 

“Tf you could have her?” concluded Gerald. 

“Ye-es, that. ” 

“And you didn’t speak to her?” 

“Yes. She came in afterwards. So it was va to her as 
well.” 

“It was! And what did she say then? You’re an engaged 
man?” 

“No,—she anly said she didn’t want to be bullied into. 
answering.” 

“She what?” 

“Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering.” 


GLADIATORIAL 313 


“ ‘Said she didn’t want to be bullied into answering!’ Why, 
what did she mean by that?” 

Birkin raised his shoulders. ‘Can’t say,’ he answered. 

“Didn’t want to be bothered just then, I suppose.” 

“But is this really so? And what did you do then?” 

“T walked out of the house and came here.” 

“You came straight here?” 

Ves,” 

Gerald stared in amazement and amusement. He could not 
take it in. 

“But is this really true, as you say it now?” 

“Word for word.” 

“Tt is?” 

He leaned back in his chair, filled with delight and amuse- 
ment. 

“Well, that’s good,” he said. “And so you came here to 
wrestle with your good angel, did you?” : 

“Did I?” said Birkin. 3 

“Well, it looks like it. Isn’t that what you did?” 

Now Birkin could not follow Gerald’s meaning. 

“And what’s going to happen?” said Gerald. “You're going 
to keep open the proposition, so to speak?” — 

“I suppose so. I vowed to myself I would see them all to 
the devil.. But I suppose I shall ask her again, in a little 
while.” 

Gerald watched him steadily. 

“So you’re fond of her then?” he asked. 

“I think—I love her,” said Birkin, his face going very still 
and fixed. 


Gerald glistened for a moment with pleasure, as if it were 
something done specially to please him. Then his face assumed 
a fitting gravity, and he nodded his head slowly. 

“You know,” he said, “I always believed in love—true love. 
But where does one find it nowadays?” 

“T don’t know,” said Birkin. 

“Very rarely,” said Gerald. Then, after a pause, “I’ve never 


314 WOMEN IN LOVE 


felt it myselfi—not what I should call love. I’ve gone after 
women—and been keen enough over some of them, But I’ve 
never felt Jove. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt as much love for 
a woman, as I have for you—not Jove. You understand what 
I mean?” 

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve never loved a woman.” 

“You feel that, do you? And do you think I ever shall? 
You understand what I mean?” He put his hand to his breast, 
closing his fist there, as if he would draw something out. “I 
mean that—that I can’t express what it is, but I know it.” 

“What is it, then?” asked Birkin. 

“You see, I can’t put it into words. I mean, at any rate, 
something abiding, something that can’t change—” 

His eyes were bright and puzzled. 

‘“‘Now do you think I shall ever feel that for a woman?” he 
said, anxiously. 

Birkin looked at him, and shook his head. 

“T don’t know,” he said. “T could not say.” 

Gerald had been on the qui vive, as awaiting his fate. Now 
he drew back in his chair. 

“No,” he said, ‘and neither do I, and neither do I.” 

“We are different, you and I,” said Birkin. “I can’t tell 
your life.” 

“No,” said Gerald, “no more can I. But I tell you—I begin 
to doubt it!” 

“That you will ever love a woman?” 

““Well—yes—what you would truly call love—” 

“You doubt it?” 

“Well—I begin to.” 

There was a long pause. 

“Life has all kinds of things,” said Birkin. “There isn’t 
only one road.” 

“Yes, I believe that too. I believe it. And mind you, I 
don’t care how it is with me—I don’t care how it is—so long 
as I don’t feel—” he paused, and a blank, barren look passed 
over his face, to express his feeling—“so long as I feel I’ve 


lived, somehow—and I don’t care how it is—but I want to feel 
that—” 


WOMEN IN LOVE 315 


“Fulfilled,” said Birkin. 

“We-ell, perhaps it is, fulfilled; I don’t use the same words 
as you.” 

“It is the same.” 


CHAPTER XXI © 
THRESHOLD 


GUDRUN was away in London, having a little show of her 
work, with a friend, and looking round, preparing for flight 
from Beldover. Come what might she would be on the wing 
in a very short time. She received a letter from Winifred 
Crich, ornamental with drawings. 


“Father also has been to London, to be examined by the doctors. 
It made him very tired. They say he must rest a very great deal, 
so he is mostly in bed. He brought me a lovely tropical parrot in 
faiénce, of Dresden ware, also a man ploughing, and two mice 
climbing up a stalk, also in faiénce. The mice were Copenhagen 
ware. They are the best, but mice don’t shine so much, otherwise 
they are very good, their tails are slim and long. They all shine 
nearly like glass. Of course it is the glaze, but I don’t like it. 
Gerald likes the man ploughing the best, his trousers are torn, he 
is ploughing with an ox, being I suppose a German peasant. It is 
all grey and white, white shirt and grey trousers, but very shiny 
and clean. Mr. Birkin likes the girl best, under the hawthorn 
blossom, with a lamb, and with daffodils painted on her skirts, in 
the drawing room. But that is silly, because the lamb is not a real 
lamb, and she is silly too. 

“Dear Miss Brangwen, are you coming back soon, you are very 
much missed here. I enclose a drawing of father sitting up in bed. 
He says he hopes you are not going to forsake us. Oh dear Miss 
Brangwen, I am sure you won’t. Do come back and draw the fer- 
rets, they are the most lovely noble darlings in the world. We 
might carve them in holly-wood, playing against a background of 
green leaves. Oh do let us, for they are most beautiful. 

“Father says we might have a studio. Gerald says we could 
easily have a beautiful one over the stables, it would only need 
windows to be put in the slant of the roof, which is a simple matter. 
Then you could stay here all day and work, and we could live in the 
studio, like two real artists, like the man in the picture in the hall, 
with the frying-pan and the walls all covered with drawings. I 
long to be free, to live the free life of an artist. Even Gerald told 
father that only an artist is free, because he lives in a creative 
world of his own——” 

316 


THRESHOLD 317 


Gudrun caught the drift of the family intentions, in this 
letter. Gerald wanted her to be attached to the household at 
Shortlands, he was using Winifred as his stalking-horse. The 
father thought only of his child, he saw a rock of salvation 
in Gudrun. And Gudrun admired him for his perspicacity. 
The child, moreover, was really exceptional. Gudrun was quite 
content. She was quite willing, given a studio, to spend her 
days at Shortlands. She disliked the Grammar School already 
thoroughly, she wanted to be free. If a studio were provided, 
she would be free to go on with her work, she would await the 
turn of events with complete serenity. And she was really 
interested in Winifred, she would be quite glad to understand 
the girl. : 

So there was quite a little festivity on Winifred’s account 
the day Gudrun returned to Shortlands. 

“You should make a bunch of flowers to give to Miss Brang- 
wen when she arrives,” Gerald said smiling to his sister. 

“Oh no,” cried Winifred, “‘it’s silly.” 

“Not at all. It is a very charming and ordinary attention.” 

“Oh, it is silly,” protested Winifred, with all the extreme 
mauvaise honte of her years. Nevertheless, the idea appealed 
to her. She wanted very much to carry it out. She flitted 
round the green-houses and the conservatory looking wistfully 
at the flowers on their stems. And the more she looked, the 
more she longed to have a bunch of the blossoms she saw, 
the more fascinated she became with her little vision of cere- 
mony, and the more consumedly shy and self-conscious she 
grew, till she was almost beside herself. She could not get 
the idea out of her mind. It was as if some haunting challenge 
prompted her, and she had not enough courage to take it up. 
So again she drifted into the green-houses, looking at the lovely 
roses in their pots, and at the virginal cyclamens, and at the 
mystic white clusters of a creeper. The beauty, oh the beauty 
of them, and oh the paradisal bliss, if she should have a perfect 
bouquet and could give it to Gudrun the next day. Her passion 
and her complete indecision almost made her ill. 

At last she slid to her father’s side. 

“Daddie—” she said. v 


318 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What, my precious?” 

But she hung back, the tears almost coming to her eyes, 
in her sensitive confusion. Her father looked at her, and his 
heart ran hot with tenderness, an anguish of poignant love. 

“What do you want to say to me, my love?” 

“Daddie—!” her eyes smiled laconically—‘isn’t it silly if I 
give Miss Brangwen some flowers when she comes?” 

The sick man looked at the bright, knowing eyes of his 
child, and his heart burned with love. 

“No, darling, that’s not silly. It’s what they do to queens.” 

This was not very reassuring to Winifred. She half suspected 
that queens in themselves were a silliness. Yet she so wanted 
her little romantic occasion. 

“Shall I then?” she asked. 

“Give Miss Brangwen some flowers? Do, Birdie. Tell 
Wilson I say you are to have what you want.” 

The child smiled a small, subtle, unconscious smile to herself, 
in anticipation of her way. 

“But I won’t get them till to-morrow,” she said. 

“Not till to-morrow, Birdie. Give me a kiss then—” 

Winifred silently kissed the sick man, and drifted out of the 
room. She again went the round of the green-houses and the 
conservatory, informing the gardener, in her high, peremptory, 
simple fashion, of what she wanted, telling him all the blooms 
she had selected. 

“What do you want these for?” Wilson asked. 

“T want them,” she said. She wished servants did not ask 
questions. 

“Ay, you’ve said as much. But what do you want them 
for, for decoration, or to send away, or what?” 

“T want them for a presentation bouquet.” 

“A presentation bouquet! Who’s coming then?—the Duchess 
of Portland?” 

“No.” 

“Oh, not her? Well you'll have a rare poppy-show if you 
put all the things you’ve mentioned into your bouquet.” 

“Yes, I want a rare poppy-show.” 

“You do! Then there’s no more to be said.” 


| 


OE eee 


Se aS ee 


THRESHOLD 319 


The next day Winifred, in a dress of silvery velvet, and 
holding a gaudy bunch of flowers in her hand, waited with keen 
impatience in the school room, looking down the drive for 
Gudrun’s arrival. It was a wet morning. Under her nose was 
the strange fragrance of hot-house flowers, the bunch was like 
a little fire to her, she seemed to have a strange new fire in her 
heart. This slight sense of romance stirred her like an 
intoxicant. 

At last she saw Gudrun coming, and she ran downstairs to 
warn her father and Gerald. They, laughing at her anxiety and 
gravity, came with her into the hall. The man-servant came 
hastening to the door, and there he was, relieving Gudrun of 
her umbrella, and then of her raincoat. The welcoming party 
hung back till their visitor entered the hall. 

Gudrun was flushed with the rain, her hair was blown in 
loose little curls, she was like a flower just opened in the rain, 
the heart of the blossom just newly visible, seeming to emit 
a warmth of retained sunshine. Gerald winced in spirit, seeing 
her so beautiful and unknown. She was wearing a soft blue 
dress, and her stockings were of dark red. 

Winifred advanced with odd, stately formality. 

“We are so glad you’ve come back,” she said. ‘These are 
your flowers.” She presented the bouquet. | 

“Mine!” cried Gudrun. She was suspended for a moment, 
then a vivid flush went over her, she was as if blinded for a 
moment with a flame of pleasure. Then her eyes, strange and 
flaming, lifted and looked at the father, and at Gerald. And 
again Gerald shrank in spirit, as if it would be more than he 
could bear, as her hot, exposed eyes rested on him. There was 
something so revealed, she was revealed beyond bearing, to his 
eyes. He turned his face aside. And he felt he would not be 
able to avert her. And he writhed under the imprisonment. 

Gudrun put her face into the flowers. 

“But how beautiful they are!” she said, in a muffled voice. 
Then, with a strange, suddenly revealed passion, she stooped 
and kissed Winifred. 

Mr, Crich went forward with his hand held out to her. 


320 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“T was afraid you were going to run away from us,” he said, 
playfully. 

Gudrun looked up at him with a luminous, roguish, unknown 
face. 

“Really!” she replied. “No, I didn’t want to stay in 
London.” 

Her voice seemed to imply that she was glad to get back to 
Shortlands, her tone was warm and subtly caressing. 

“That is a good thing,” smiled the father. “You see you are 
very welcome here among us.” 

Gudrun only looked into his face with dark-blue, warm, 
shy eyes. She was unconsciously carried away by her own 
power. ~ 

“And you look as if you came home in every possible 
triumph,” Mr. Crich continued, holding her hand. 

“No,” she said, glowing strangely. “I haven’t had any 
triumph till I came here.” 

“Ah, come, come! We’re not going to hear any of. those 
tales. Haven't we read notices in the newspaper, Gerald?” 

“You came off pretty well,” said Gerald to her, shaking 
hands. “Did you sell anything?” 

“No,” she said, “not much.” 

“Just as well,” he said. 

She wondered what he meant. But she was all aglow with 
her reception, carried away by this little flattering ceremonial 
on her behalf. 

“Winifred,” said the father, “have you a pair of shoes for 
Miss Brangwen? You had better change at once—” 

Gudrun went out with her bouquet in her hand. 

“Quite a remarkable young woman,” said the father to 
Gerald, when she had gone. 

“Yes,” replied Gerald briefly, as if he did not like the 
observation. 

Mr. Crich liked Gudrun to sit with him for half an hour. 
Usually he was ashy and wretched, with all the life gnawed 
out of him. But as soon as he rallied, he liked to make believe 
that he was just as before, quite well and in the midst of life 
—not of the outer world, but in the midst of a strong essential 


aa 


THRESHOLD 321 


life. And to this belief, Gudrun contributed perfectly. With 
her, he could get by stimulation those precious half-hours of 
strength and exaltation and pure freedom, when he seemed to 
live more than he had ever lived. 

She came to him as he lay propped up in the library. His 
face was like yellow wax, his eyes darkened, as it were sightless. 


His black beard, now streaked with grey, seemed to spring out 


of the waxy flesh of a corpse. Yet the atmosphere about him 
was energetic and playful. Gudrun subscribed to this, perfectly. 
To her fancy, he was just an ordinary man. Only his rather 
terrible appearance was photographed upon her soul, away 
beneath her consciousness. She knew that, in spite of this 
playfulness, his eyes could not change from their darkened 
vacancy, they were the eyes of a man who is dead. 

“Ah, this is Miss Brangwen,” he said, suddenly rousing as 
she entered, announced by the man-servant. “Thomas, put 
Miss Brangwen a chair here—that’s right.” He looked at her 
soft, fresh face with pleasure. It gave him the illusion of life. 
“Now, you will have a glass of sherry and a little piece of 
cake. Thomas—” 

“No, thank you,” said Gudrun. And as soon as she had 
said it, her heart sank horribly. The sick man seemed to fall 
into a gap of death, at her contradiction. She ought to play 
up to him, not to contravene him. In an instant she was 
smiling her rather roguish smile. 

“I don’t like sherry very much,” she said. “But I like 
almost anything else.” 

The sick man caught at this straw instantly. 

“Not sherry! No! Something else! What then? What 
is there, Thomas?” 

“Port wine—curacao——” 

“I would love some curagao—” said Gudrun, looking at the 
sick man confidingly. 

“You would. Well then Thomas, curagao—and a little 
cake, or a biscuit?” 

“A biscuit,” said Gudrun. She did not want anything, but 
she was wise. 

“Ves,” 


322 WOMEN IN LOVE 


He waited till she was settled with her little glass and her 
biscuit. Then he was satisfied. 

“You have heard the plan,” he said with some excitement, 
“for a studio for Winifred, over the stables?” 

“No!” exclaimed Gudrun, in mock wonder. 

“Oh!—TI thought Winnie wrote it to you, in her letter!” 

‘“Oh—yes—of course. But I thought perhaps it was only 
her own little idea—” Gudrun smiled subtly, indulgently. The 
sick man smiled also, elated. 

“Oh no. It isa real project. There is a good room under 
the roof of the stables—with sloping rafters. We had thought 
of converting it into a studio.” 

“How very nice that would be!” cried Gudrun, with excited 
warmth. The thought of the rafters stirred her. 

“You think it would? Well, it can be done.” 

“But how perfectly splendid for Winifred! Of course, it is 
just what is needed, if she is to work at all seriously. One 
must have one’s workshop, otherwise one never ceases to be an 
amateur.” 

“Is that so? Yes. Of course, I should like you to share 
it with Winifred.” 

“Thank you so much.” 

Gudrun knew all these things already, but she must look shy 
and very grateful, as if overcome. 

“Of course, what I should like best, would be if you could 
give up your work at the Grammar School, and just avail 
yourself of the studio, and work there—well, as much or as 
little as you liked—” 

He looked at Gudrun with dark, vacant eyes. She looked 
back at him as if full of gratitude. These phrases of a dying 
man were so complete and natural, coming like echoes through 
his dead mouth. 

“And as to your earnings—you don’t mind taking from me 
what you have taken from the Education Committee, do you? 
I don’t want you to be a loser.” 

“Oh,” said Gudrun, “if I can have the studio and work there, 
I can earn money enough, really I can.” 


“Well,” he said, pleased to be the benefactor, “we can see 


—— Oa 


THRESHOLD 323 


about all that. You wouldn’t mind spending your days here?” 

“Tf there were a studio to work in,” said Gudrun, “I could 
ask for nothing better.” 

“Ts that so?” 

He was really very pleased. But already he was getting 
tired. She could see the grey, awful semi-consciousness of 
mere pain and dissolution coming over him again, the torture 
coming into the vacancy of his darkened eyes. It was not 
over yet, this process of death. She rose softly saying: 

“Perhaps you will sleep. I must look for Winifred.” 

She went out, telling the nurse that she had left him. Day 
by day the tissue of the sick man was further and further 
reduced, nearer and nearer the process came, towards the last . 
knot which held the human being in its unity. But this 
knot was hard and unrelaxed, the will of the dying man never 
gave way. He might be dead in nine-tenths, yet the remaining 
tenth remained unchanged, till it too was torn apart. With 
his will he held the unit of himself firm, but the circle of his 
power was ever and ever reduced, it would be reduced to a 
point at last, then swept away. 

To adhere to life, he must adhere to human relationships, 
and he caught at every straw. Winifred, the butler, the nurse, 
Gudrun, these were the people who meant all to him, in these 
last resources. Gerald, in his father’s presence, stiffened 
with repulsion. It was so, to a less degree, with all the other 
children except Winifred. They could not see anything but the 
death, when they looked at their father. It was as if some 
subterranean dislike overcame them. They could not see the 
familiar face, hear the familiar voice. They were overwhelmed 
by the antipathy of visible and audible death. Gerald could 
not breathe in his father’s presence. He must get out at once. 
And so, in the same way, the father could not bear the presence 
of his son. It sent a final irritation through the soul of the 
dying man. 

The studio was made ready, Gudrun and Winifred moved 
in. They enjoyed so much the ordering and the appointing 
of it. And now they need hardly be in the house at all. They 
had their meals in the studio, they lived there safely. For the 


324 WOMEN IN LOVE 


house was becoming dreadful. There were two nurses in white, — 
flitting silently about, like heralds of death. The father was 
confined to his bed, there was a come and go of sotto-voce 
sisters and brothers and children. 

Winifred was her father’s constant visitor. Every morning, 
after breakfast, she went into his room when he was washed 
and propped up in bed, to spend half an hour with him. 

‘Are you better, Daddie?” she asked him invariably. 

And invariably he answered: 

“Yes, I think I’m a little better, pet.” 

She held his hand in both her own, lovingly and protec- 
tively. And this was very dear to him. 

She ran in again as a rule at lunch time, to tell him the 
course of events, and every evening, when the curtains were 
drawn, and his room was cosy, she spent a long time with him. 
Gudrun was gone home, Winifred was alone in the house: she 
like best to be with her father. They talked and prattled at 
random, he always as if he were well, just the same as: when 
he was going about. So that Winifred, with a child’s subtle 
instinct for avoiding the painful things, behaved as if nothing 
serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her atten- 
tion, and was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as 
well as the adults knew: perhaps better. 

Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But 
when she went away, he relapsed under the misery of his 
dissolution. But still there were these bright moments, though 
as his strength waned, his faculty for attention grew weaker, 
and the nurse had to send Winifred away, to save him from 
exhaustion. | 

He never admitted that he was going to die. He knew it 
was so, he knew it was the end. Yet even to himself he did 
not admit it. He hated the fact, mortally. His will was rigid. 
He could not bear being overcome by death. For him, there 
was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great need to cry 
out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry 
aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his 
composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he 
recoiled,. to avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death 


ee a, 


7 
) 


THRESHOLD 325 


repelled him too much. One should die quickly, like the 
Romans, one should be master of one’s fate in dying as in 
living. He was convulsed in the clasp of this death of his 
father’s, as in the coils of the great serpent of Laocoon. The 
great serpent had got the father, and the son was dragged 
into the embrace of horrifying death along with him. He 
resisted always. And in some strange way, he was a tower of 
strength to his father. 

The last time the dying man asked to see Gudrun he was 
grey with near death. Yet he must see someone, he must, 
in the intervals of consciousness, catch into connection with 
the living world, lest he should have to accept his own situa- 
tion. Fortunately he was most of his time dazed and half 
gone. And he spent many hours dimly thinking of the past, 
as it were, dimly re-living his old experiences. But there 
were times even to the end when he was capable of realising 
what was happening to him in the present, the death that was 
on him. And these were the times when he called in outside 
help, no matter whose. For to realise this death that he was 
dying was a death beyond death, never to be borne. It was 
an admission never to be made. 

Gudrun was shocked by his appearance, and by the dark- 
ened, almost disintegrated eyes, that still were unconquered 
and firm. 

“Well,” he said in his weakened voice, “and how are you 
and Winifred getting on?” 

“Oh, very well indeed,” replied Gudrun. 

There were slight dead gaps in the conversation, as if the 
ideas called up were only elusive straws floating on the dark 
chaos of the sick man’s dying. 

“The studio answers all right?” he said. 

“Splendid. It couldn’t be more beautiful and perfect,” said 
Gudrun. 

She waited for what he would say next. 

“And you think Winifred has the makings of a sculptor?” 

It was strange how hollow the words were, meaningless. 

“I’m sure she has. She will do good things one day.” 


326 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Ah! Then her life won’t be altogether wasted, you think?” 

Gudrun was rather surprised. 

“Sure it won’t!” she exclaimed softly. 

“That’s right.” 

Again Gudrun waited for what he would say. 

“You find life pleasant, it is good to live, isn’t it?” he asked, 
with a pitiful faint smile that was almost too much for Gudrun. 

“Yes,” she smiled—she would lie at random—“I get a pretty 
good time I believe.” 

“That’s right. A happy nature is a great aon 

Again Gudrun smiled, though her soul was dry with repul- 
sion. Did one have to die like this—having the life extracted 
forcibly from one, whilst one smiled and made conversation 
to the end? Was there no other way? Must one go through 
all the horror of this victory over death, the triumph of the 
integral will, that would not be broken till it disappeared 
utterly? One must, it was the only way. She admired the 
self-possession and the control of the dying man exceedingly. 
But she loathed the death itself. She was glad the everyday 
world held good, and she need not recognise anything beyond. 

“You are quite all right here?—nothing we can do for 
your—nothing you find wrong in your position?” 

“Except that you are too good to me,” said Gudrun. 

“Ah, well, the fault of that lies with yourself,” he said, and 
he felt a little exultation, that he had made this speech. He 
was still so strong and living! But the nausea of death began 
to creep back on him, in reaction. 

Gudrun went away, back to Winifred. Mademoiselle had 
left, Gudrun stayed a good deal at Shortlands, and a tutor 
came in to carry on Winifred’s education. But he did not 
live in the house, he was connected with the Grammar School. 

One day, Gudrun was to drive with Winifred and Gerald 
and Birkin to town, in the car. It was a dark, showery day. 
Winifred and Gudrun were ready and waiting at the door. 
Winifred was very quiet, but Gudrun had not noticed. Sud- 
denly the child asked, in a voice of unconcern: 

“Do.you think my father’s going to die, Miss Brangwen?” 

Gudrun started. 


THRESHOLD 327 


“JT don’t know,” she replied. 

“Don’t you truly?” 

“Nobody knows for certain. He may die, of course.” 

The child pondered a few moments, then she asked: 

“But do you think he will die?” 

It was put almost like a question in geography or science, 
insistent, as if she would force an admission from the adult. 
The watchful, slightly triumphant child was almost diabolical. 

“Do I think he will die?” repeated Gudrun. “Yes, I do.” 

But Winifred’s large eyes were fixed on her, and the girl 
did not move. 

“He is very ill,” said Gudrun. 

A small smile. came over Winifred’s face, subtle and scep- 
tical. 

“TJ don’t believe he will,” the child asserted, mockingly, 
and she moved away into the drive. Gudrun watched the iso- 
lated figure, and her heart stood still. Winifred was playing 
with a little rivulet of water, absorbedly as if nothing had 
been said. 

“T’ye made a proper dam,” she said, out of the moist 
distance. 

Gerald came to the door from out of the hall behind. 

“Tt is just as well she doesn’t choose to believe it,” he said. 

Gudrun looked at him. Their eyes met; and they exchanged 
a sardonic understanding. 

“Just as well,” said Gudrun. 

He looked at her again, and a fire flickered up in his eyes. 

“Best to dance while Rome burns, since it must burn, don’t 
you think?” he said. 

She was rather taken aback. But, gathering herself to- 
gether, she replied: 

“OQh—better dance than wail, certainly.” 

“So I think.” 

And they both felt the subterranean desire to let go, to 
fling away everything, and lapse into a sheer unrestraint, brutal 
and licentious. A strange black passion surged up pure in » 
Gudrun. She felt strong. She felt her hands so strong, as 
if she could tear the world asunder with them. She remem- 


328 — WOMEN IN LOVE 


bered the abandonments of Roman licence, and her heart grew 
hot. She knew she wanted this herself also—or something, 
something equivalent. Ah, if that which was unknown and 
suppressed in her were once let loose, what an orgiastic and 
satisfying event it would be. And she wanted it, she trembled 
slightly from the proximity of the man, who stood just behind 
her, suggestive of the same black licentiousness that rose in 
herself. She wanted it with him, this unacknowledged frenzy. 
For a moment the clear perception of this preoccupied her, 
distinct and perfect in its final reality. Then she shut it off 
completely, saying: 

“We might as well go down to the lodge after Winifred— 
we can get in the car there.” 

“So we can,” he answered, going with her. 

They found Winifred at the lodge admiring the litter of 
pure-bred white puppies. The girl looked up, and there was a 
rather ugly, unseeing cast in her eyes as she turned to Gerald 
and Gudrun. She did not want to see them, : 

“Look!” she cried. ‘Three new puppies! Marshall says 
this one seems perfect. Isn’t it a sweetling? But it isn’t so 
nice as its mother.”’ She turned to caress the fine white bull- 
terrier bitch that stood uneasily near her. 

“My dearest Lady Crich,” she said, “you are beautiful as 
an angel on earth. Angel—angel—don’t you think she’s good 
enough and beautiful enough to go to heaven, Gudrun? They 
will be in heaven, won’t they—and especially my darling Lady 
Crich! Mrs. Marshall, I say!” 

“Yes, Miss Winifred?” said the woman, appearing at the 
door. 

“Oh do call this one Lady Winifred, if she turns out per- 
fect, will you? Do tell Marshall to call it Lady Winifred.” 

“ll tell him—but I’m afraid that’s a gentleman puppy, 
Miss Winifred.” 

“Oh no!” There was the sound of acar. ‘“There’s Rupert!” 
cried the child, and she ran to the gate. 

Birkin, driving his car, pulled up outside the lodge gate. 

“We're ready!” cried Winifred. “I want to sit in front 
with you, Rupert. May I?” 


THRESHOLD 329 


“I’m afraid you'll fidget about and fall out,” he said. 

“No I won’t. I do want to sit in front next to you. It 
makes my feet so lovely and warm, from the engines.” 

Birkin helped her up, amused at sending Gerald to sit by 
Gudrun in the body of the car. 

“Fave you any news, Rupert?” Gerald called, as they rushed 
along the lanes. 

“News?” exclaimed Birkin. 

“Yes.” Gerald looked at Gudrun, who sat by his side, and 
he said, his eyes narrowly laughing, “I want to know whether 
I ought to congratulate him, but I can’t get anything definite 
out of him.” 

Gudrun flushed deeply. 

“Congratulate him on what?” she asked. 

“There was some mention of an engagement —at least, he 
said something to me about it.” 

Gudrun flushed darkly. 

“You mean with Ursula?” she said, in challenge. 

“Yes. That is so, isn’t it?” 

“T don’t think there’s any engagement,” said Gudrun, coldly. 

“That so? Still no developments, Rupert?” he called. 

“Where? Matrimonial? No.” 

““How’s that?” called Gudrun. 

Birkin glanced quickly round. There was irritation in his 
eyes also. | 

“Why?” he replied. “What do you think of it, Gudrun?” 

“Oh,” she cried, determined to fling her stone also into 
the pool, since they had begun, “I don’t think she wants an 
engagement. Naturally, she’s a bird that prefers the bush.” 
Gudrun’s voice was clear and gong-like. It reminded Rupert 
of her father’s, so strong and vibrant. 

“And I,” said Birkin, his face playful but yet determined, 
“T want a binding contract, and am not keen on love, par- 
ticularly free love.” 

They were both amused. Why this public avowal? Gerald 
seemed suspended a moment, in amusement. 

“Love isn’t good enough for you?” he called. 

“No!” shouted Birkin. 


330 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Ha, well that’s being over-refined,” said Gerald, and the 
car ran through the mud. 

“What’s the matter really?” said Gerald, turning to Gudrun. 

This was an assumption of a sort of intimacy that irritated 
Gudrun almost like an affront. It seemed to her that Gerald 
was deliberately insulting her, and infringing on the decent 
privacy of them all. 

“What is it?” she said, in her high, repellant voice. “Don’t 
ask me!—I know nothing about ultimate marriage, I assure 
you: or even penultimate.” 

“Only the ordinary unwarrantable brand!” replied Gerald. 
“Just so—same here. I am no expert on marriage, and degrees 
of ultimateness. It seems to be a bee that buzzes loudly in 
Rupert’s bonnet.” 

“Exactly! But that is his trouble, exactly! Instead of 
wanting a woman for herself, he wants his ideas fulfilled. 
Which, when it comes to actual practice, is not good enough.” 

“Oh, no. Best go slap for what’s womanly in woman, like 
a bull at a gate.” Then he seemed to glimmer in himself. 
“You think love is the ticket, do you?” he asked. 

“Certainly, while it lasts—you only can’t insist on perma- 
nency,” came Gudrun’s voice, strident above the noise. 

“Marriage or no marriage, ultimate or penultimate or just 
so-so?—take the love as you find it.” 

“As you please, or as you don’t please,” she echoed. “Mar- 
riage is a social arrangement, I take it, and has nothing to 
do with the question of love.” 

His eyes were flickering on her all the time. She felt as if 
he were kissing her freely and malevolently. It made the 
colour burn in her cheeks, but her heart was quite firm and 
unfailing. 

“You think Rupert is off his head a bit?” Gerald asked. 

Her eyes flashed with acknowledgment. 

“As regards a woman, yes,” she said, “I do. There is such 
a thing as two people being in love for the whole of their 
lives—perhaps. But marriage is neither here nor there, even 
then. If they are in love, well and good. If not—why break 
eggs about it!” | 


THRESHOLD 331 


“Yes,” said Gerald. “That’s how it strikes me. But what 
about Rupert?” 

“T can’t make out—neither can he nor anybody. He seems 
to think that if you marry you can get through marriage into 
a third heaven, or something—all very vague.” 

“Very! And who wants a third heaven? As a matter of 
fact, Rupert has a great yearning to be safe—to tie himself 
to the mast.” 

“Yes. It seems to me he’s mistaken there too,” said Gudrun. 
“I’m sure a mistress is more likely to be faithful than a wife— 
just because she is her own mistress. No—he says he believes 
that a man and wife can go further than any other two beings 
—but where, is not explained. They can know each other, 
heavenly and hellish, but particularly hellish, so perfectly that 
they go beyond heaven and hell—into—there it all breaks down 
—into nowhere.” 

“Into Paradise, he says,” laughed Gerald. 

Gudrun shrugged her shoulders. “Je m’en fiche of your 
Paradise!” she said. 

“Not being a Mohammedan,” said Gerald. Birkin sat 
motionless, driving the car, quite unconscious of what they 
said. And Gudrun, sitting immediately behind him, felt a 
sort of ironic pleasure in thus exposing him. 

“He says,” she added, with a grimace of irony, “that you 
can find an eternal equilibrium in marriage, if you accept the 
unison, and still leave yourself separate, don’t try to fuse.” 

“Doesn’t inspire me,” said Gerald. 

“That’s just it,” said Gudrun. 

“I believe in love, in a real abandon, if you’re capable of 
it,” said Gerald. 

“So do I,” said she. 

“And so does Rupert, too—though he is always shouting.” 

“No,” said Gudrun. “He won’t abandon himself to the 
other person. You can’t be sure of him. That’s the trouble 
T think.” 

“Vet he wants marriage! Marriage—et puis?” 

“Le paradis!” mocked Gudrun. 


332 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Birkin, as he drove, felt a creeping of the spine, as if 
somebody were threatening his neck. But he shrugged with — 
indifference. It began to rain. Here was a change. He ~ 
stopped the car and got down to put up the hood. 


CHAPTER XXII 
‘WOMAN TO WOMAN 


THEY came to the town, and left Gerald at the railway 
station. Gudrun and Winifred were to come to tea with 
Birkin, who expected Ursula also. In the afternoon, however, 
the first person to turn up was Hermione. Birkin was out, 
so she went in the drawing-room, looking at his books and 
papers, and playing on the piano. Then Ursula arrived. She 
was surprised, unpleasantly so, to see Hermione, of whom she 
had heard nothing for some time. 

“Tt is a surprise to see you,” she said. 

“Ves,” said Hermione— “I’ve been away at Aix—” 

“Oh, for your health?” 

“Ves,” 

The two women looked at each other. Ursula resented 
Hermione’s long, grave, downward-looking face. There was 
something of the stupidity and the unenlightened self-esteem 
of a horse in it. “She’s got a horse-face,” Ursula said to 
herself, “she runs between blinkers.” It did seem as if Her- 
mione, like the moon, had only one side to her penny. ‘There 
was no obverse. She stared out all the time on the narrow, 
but to her, complete world of the extant consciousness. In 
the darkness, she did not exist. Like the moon, one half of 
her was lost to life. Her self was all in her head, she did 
not know what it was, spontaneously to run or move, like a 
fish in the water, or a weasel on the grass. She must always 
know. 

But Ursula only suffered from Hermione’s one-sidedness. 
She only felt Hermione’s cool evidence, which seemed to put 
her down as nothing. Hermione, who brooded and brooded 
till she was exhausted with the ache of her effort at conscious- 
ness, spent and ashen in her body, who gained so slowly and 
with such effort her final and barren conclusions of knowledge, 

333 


334 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was apt, in the presence of other women, whom she thought 
simply female, to wear the conclusions of her bitter assurance 
like jewels which conferred on her an unquestionable distinc- 
tion, established her in a higher order of life. She was apt, 
mentally, to condescend to women such as Ursula, whom she 
regarded as purely emotional. Poor Hermione, it was her one 
possession, this aching certainty of hers, it was her only 
justification. She must be confident here, for God knows, 
she felt rejected and deficient enough elsewhere. In the life 
of thought, of the spirit, she was one of the elect. And she 
wanted to be universal. But there was a devastating cynicism 
at the bottom of her. She did not believe in her own univer- 
sals—they were sham. She did not believe in the inner life— 
it was a trick, not a reality. She did not believe in the 
spiritual world—it was an affectation. In the last resort, she 
believed in Mammon, the flesh, and the devil—these at least 
were not sham. She was a priestess without belief, without 
conviction, suckled in a creed outworn, and condemned to the 
reiteration of mysteries that were not divine to her. Yet there 
was no escape. She was a leaf upon a dying tree. What help 
was there then, but to fight still for the old, withered truths, 
to die for the old, outworn belief, to be a sacred and inviolate 
priestess of desecrated mysteries? The old great truths had 
been true. And she was a leaf of the old great tree of knowl- 
edge that was withering now. To the old and last truth then 
she must be faithful even though cynicism and mockery took 
place at the bottom of her soul. 

“I am so glad to see you,” she said to Ursula, in her slow 
voice, that was like an incantation. “You and Rupert have 
become quite friends?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Ursula. “He is always somewhere in the 
background.” 

Hermione paused before she answered. She saw perfectly 
well the other woman’s vaunt: it seemed truly vulgar. 

“Is he?” she said slowly, and with perfect equanimity. 
“And do you think he will marry?” 

The question was so calm and mild, so simple and bare 
and dispassionate that Ursula was somewhat taken aback, 


WOMAN TO WOMAN 335 


rather attracted. It pleased her almost like a wickedness. 
There was some delightful naked irony in Hermione. 

“Well,” replied Ursula, “He wants to, awfully, but I’m 
not so sure.” 

Hermione watched her with slow calm eyes. She noted 
this new expression of vaunting. How she envied Ursula a 
certain unconscious positivity! even her vulgarity! 

“Why aren’t you sure?” she asked, in her easy sing-song. 
She was perfectly at her ease, perhaps even rather happy in 
this conversation. “You don’t really love him?” 

Ursula flushed a little at the mild impertinence of this ques- 
tion. And yet she could not definitely take offence. Hermione 
seemed so calmly and sanely candid. After all, it was rather 
great to be able to be so sane. 

“He says it isn’t love he wants,” she replied. 

“What is it then?” Hermione was slow and level. 

“He wants me really to accept him in marriage.” 

Hermione was silent for some time, watching Ursula with 
slow, pensive eyes. 

“Does he?” she said at length, without expression. Then, 
rousing, “And what is it you don’t want? You don’t want 
marriage?” 

“No—I don’t—not really. I don’t want to give the sort 
of submission he insists on. He wants me to give myself up— 
and I simply don’t feel that I can do it.” 

Again there was a long pause, before Hermione replied: 

“Not if you don’t want to.” Then again there was silence. 
Hermione shuddered with a strange desire. Ah, if only he 
had asked ker to subserve him, to be his slave! She shud- 
dered with desire. 

“You see I can’t—” 

“But exactly in what does—” 

They had both begun at once, they both stopped. Then 
Hermione, assuming priority of speech, resumed as if wearily: 

“To what does he want you to submit?” 

“He says he wants me to accept him non-emotionally, and 
finally— I really don’t know what he means. He says he 
wants the demon part of himself to be mated—physically— 


336 WOMEN IN LOVE 


not the human being. You see he says one thing one day, 
and another the next—and he always contradicts himself—” 

“And always thinks about himself, and his own dissatisfac- 
tion,” said Hermione slowly. 

“Yes,” cried Ursula. “As if there were no-one but himself 
concerned. That makes it so impossible.” 

But immediately she began to retract. 

“He insists on my accepting God knows what in him,” she 
resumed. “He wants me to accept him as—as an absolute— 
But it seems to me he doesn’t want to give anything. He 
doesn’t want real warm intimacy—he won’t have it—he rejects 
it. He won’t let me think, really, and he won’t let me feel— 
he hates feelings.” 

There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only 
he would have made this demand of her? Her he drove into 
thought, drove inexorably into knowledge—and then execrated 
her for it. 

“He wants me to sink myself,” Ursula resumed, “not to 
have any being of my own—” 

“Then why doesn’t he marry an odalisk?” said Hermione 
in her mild sing-song, “if it is that he wants.” Her long face 
looked sardonic and amused. 

“Yes,” said Ursula vaguely. After all, the tiresome thing 
was, he did not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. 
Hermione would have been his slave—there was in her a horri- 
ble desire to prostrate herself before a man—a man who wor- 
shipped her, however, and admitted her as the supreme thing. 
He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to take 
something from him, to give herself up so much that she could 
take the last realities of him, the last facts, the last physical 
facts, physical and unbearable. 

And if she did, would he acknowledge her? Would he be 
able to acknowledge her through everything, or would he use 
her just as his instrument, use her for his own private satis- 
faction, not admitting her? That was what the other men 
had done. They had wanted their own show, and they would 
not admit her, they turned all she was into nothingness. Just 
as Hermione now betrayed herself as a woman. Hermione was 


eS an oe, 


7 


7 = ~~ - 


ie ee Pa a a 


26-2. > ee 


WOMAN TO WOMAN 337 


like a man, she believed only in men’s things. She betrayed 
the woman in herself. And Birkin, would he acknowledge, or 
would he deny her? 

“Yes,” said Hermione, as each woman came out of her 
own separate reverie. “It would be a mistake—TI think it 
would be a mistake—” 

“To marry him?” asked Ursula. 

“Yes,” said Hermione slowly— “I think you need a man— 
soldierly, strong-willed—” Hermione held out her hand and 
clenched it with rhapsodic intensity. “You should have a 
man like the old heroes—you need to stand behind him as he 
goes into battle, you need to see his strength, and to hear 
his shout— You need a man physically strong, and virile in 
his will, mot a sensitive man—” ‘There was a break, as if 
the pythoness had uttered the oracle, and now the woman went 
on, in a rhapsody-wearied voice: “And you see, Rupert isn’t 
this, he isn’t. He is frail in health and body, he needs. great, 
great care. Then he is so changeable and unsure of himself— 
it requires the greatest patience and understanding to help 
him. And I don’t think you are patient. You would have to 
be prepared to suffer—dreadfully. I can’t tell you how much 
suffering it would take to make him happy. He lives an 
intensely spiritual life, at times—too, too wonderful. And 
then come the reactions. I can’t speak of what I have been 
through with him. We have been together so long, I really 
do: know him, I do know what he is. And I feel I must say 
it; 1 feel it would be perfectly disastrous for you to marry 
him—for you even more than for him.” Hermione lapsed 
into bitter reverie. “He is so uncertain, so unstable—he 
wearies, and then reacts. I couldn’t fell you what his reactions 
are. I couldn’t fell you the agony of them. That which he 
affirms and loves one day—a little later he turns on it in a 
fury of destruction. He is never constant, always this awful, 
dreadful reaction. Always the quick change from good to 
bad, bad to good. And nothing is so devastating, nothing—” 

“Yes,” said Ursula humbly, “you must have suffered.” 

An unearthly light came on Hermione’s face. She clenched 
her hand like one inspired. 


338 * WOMEN IN LOVE 


“And one must be willing to suffer—willing to suffer for 
him hourly, daily,”—if you are going to help him, if he is to 
keep true to anything at all—” 

“And I don’t want to suffer hourly and daily,” said Ursula. 
“T don’t, I should be ashamed. I think it is degrading not to 
be happy.” 7 

Hermione stopped and looked at her a long time. 

“Do you?” she said at last. And this utterance seemed to 
her a mark of Ursula’s far distance from herself. For to 
Hermione suffering was the greatest reality, come what might. 
Yet she too had a creed of happiness. 

“Yes,” she said. “One should be happy—” But it was 
a matter of will. 

“Yes,” said Hermione, listlessly now, “I can only feel that 
it would be disastrous, disastrous—at least, to marry in a 
hurry. Can’t you be together without marriage? Can’t you 
go away and live somewhere without marriage? I do feel 
that marriage would be fatal, for both of you. I think for 
you even more than for him—and I think of his health—” 

“Of course,” said Ursula, “J don’t care about marriage— 
it isn’t really important to me—it’s he who wants it.” 

“Tt is his idea for the moment,” said Hermione, with that 
weary finality, and a sort of sé jeunesse savait infallibility. 

There was a pause. Then Ursula broke into faltering chal- 
lenge. 

“You think I’m merely a physical woman, don’t you?” 

“No, indeed,” said Hermione. “No, indeed! But I think 
you are vital and young— it isn’t a question of years, or even 
of experience—it is almost a question of race. Rupert is 
race-old, he comes of an old race—and you seem to me so 
young, you come of a young, inexperienced race.” 

“Do I!” said Ursula. “But I think he is awfully young, on 
one side.” 

“Yes, perhaps—childish in many respects. Nevertheless—” 

They both lapsed into silence. Ursula was filled with deep 
resentment and a touch of hopelessness. “It isn’t true,’’ she 
said to herself, silently addressing her adversary. “It isn’t 
true. And it is you who want a physically strong, bullying 


WOMAN TO WOMAN 339 


man, not I. It is you who want an unsensitive man, not I. 
You don’t know anything about Rupert, not really, in spite 
of the years you have had with him. You don’t give him a 
woman’s love, you give him an ideal love, and that is why he 
reacts away from you. You don’t know. You only know the 
dead things. Any kitchen maid would know something about 
him, you don’t know. What do you think your knowledge is 
but ‘dead understanding, that doesn’t mean a thing. You are 
so false, and untrue, how could you know anything? What 
is the good of your talking about love—you untrue spectre 
of a woman! How can you know anything, when you don’t 
believe? You don’t believe in yourself and your own woman- 
hood, so what good is your conceited, shallow cleverness—!”’ 

The two women sat on in antagonistic silence. Hermione 
felt injured, that all her good intention, all her offering, only 
left the other woman in vulgar antagonism. But then, Ursula 
could not understand, never would understand, could never be 
more than the usual jealous and unreasonable female, with 
a good deal of powerful female emotion, female attraction, 
and a fair amount of female understanding, but no mind. 
Hermione had decided long ago that where there was no mind, 
it was useless to appeal for reason—one had merely to ignore 
the ignorant. And Rupert—he had now reacted towards the 
strongly female, healthy, selfish woman—it was his reaction 
for the time being—there was no helping it all. It was all 
a foolish backward and forward, a violent oscillation that 
would at length be too violent for his coherency, and he would 
smash and be dead. There was no saving him. This violent 
and directionless reaction between animalism and _ spiritual 
truth would go on in him till he tore himself in two between 
the opposite directions, and disappeared meaninglessly out of 
life. It was no good—he too was without unity, without mind, 
in the ultimate stages of living; not quite man enough to make 
a destiny for a woman. 

They sat on till Birkin came in and found them together. 
He felt at once the antagonism in the atmosphere, something 
radical and insuperable, and he bit his bs But he affected a 
bluff manner. 


340 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Hello, Hermione, are you back again? How do you feel?” 

“Oh, better. And how are you—you don’t look well—” 

“Qh!—I believe Gudrun and Winnie Crich are coming in 
to tea. Atleast they said they were. We shall be a tea-party. 
What train did you come by, Ursula?” 

It was rather annoying to see him trying to placate both 
women at once. Both women watched him, Hermione with 
deep resentment and pity for him, Ursula very impatient. 
He was nervous and apparently in quite good spirits, chat- 
tering the conventional commonplaces. Ursula was amazed 
and indignant at the way he made small-talk; he was adept 
as any fat in Christendom. She became quite stiff, she would 
not answer. It all seemed to her so false and so belittling. 
And still Gudrun did not appear. 

“T think I shall go to Florence for the winter,” said Her- 
mione at length. 

‘Will you?” he answered. “But it is so cold there.” 

“Yes, but I shall stay with Palestra. It is quite comfort- 
able. ” 

“What takes you to Florence?” 

“T don’t know,” said Hermione slowly. Then she looked at 
him with her slow, heavy gaze. “Barnes is starting his school 
of esthetics, and Olandese is going to give a set of discourses 
on the Italian national policy—” 

“Both rubbish,” he said. 

“No, I don’t think so,” said Hermione. 

“Which do you admire, then?” 

“T admire both. Barnes is a pioneer. And then I am inter- 
ested in Italy, in her coming to national consciousness.” 

“T wish she’d come to something different from national 
consciousness, then,” said Birkin, “especially as it only means 
a sort of commercial-industrial consciousness. I hate Italy 
and her national rant. And I think Barnes is an amateur.” 

Hermione was silent for some moments, in a state of hos- 
tility. But yet, she had got Birkin back again into her world! 
How subtle her influence was, she seemed to start his irritable 
attention into her direction exclusively, in one minute. He 
was her creature. 


WOMAN TO WOMAN 341 


“No,” she said, “you are wrong.” Then a sort of tension 
came over her, she raised her face like the pythoness inspired 
with oracles, and went on, in rhapsodic manner: “Il Sandro mi 
scrive che ha accolto il piu grande entusiasmo, tutte i giovani, 
e fanciulle e ragazzi, sono tutti—”’ She went on in Italian, as 
if, in thinking of the Italians she thought in their language. 

He listened with a shade of distaste to her rhapsody, then 
he said: 

“For all that, I don’t like it. Their nationalism is just indus- 
trialism—that and a shallow jealousy I detest so much.” 

“Tf think you are wrong—lI think you are wrong—” said 
Hermione. “It seems to me purely spontaneous and beau- 
tiful, the modern Italian’s passion, for it is a passion, for 
Italy, L’Italia—”’ 

“Do you know Italy well?” Ursula asked of Hermione. 
Hermione hated to be broken in upon in this manner. Yet 
she answered mildly: 

“Yes, pretty well. I spent several years of my girlhood 
there, with my mother. My mother died in Florence.” 

Eye. 7?. f 

There was a pause, painful to Ursula and to Birkin. Her- 
mione however seemed abstracted and calm. Birkin was white, 
his eyes glowed as if he were in a fever, he was far too over- 
wrought. How Ursula suffered in this tense atmosphere of 
strained wills! Her head seemed bound round by iron bands. 

Birkin rang the bell for tea. They could not wait for 
Gudrun any longer. When the door was opened, the cat 
walked in. 

“Micio! Micio!” called Hermione, in her slow, deliberate 
sing-song. The young cat turned to look at her, then, with 
his slow and stately walk he advanced to her side. 

“Vieni—vieni qua,” Hermione was saying, in her strange 
caressive, protective voice, as if she were always the elder, 
the mother superior. ‘Vieni dire Buon’ Giorno all zia. Mi 
ricorde, mi ricorde bene—non é vero, piccolo? E vero che 
mi ricordi? E vero?” And slowly she rubbed his head, slowly 
and with ironic indifference. 


342 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Does he understand Italian?” said Ursula, who knew 
nothing of the language. 

“Ves,” said Hermione at length. “His mother was Italian. 
She was born in my waste-paper basket in Florence, on the 
morning of Rupert’s birthday. She was his birthday present.” 

Tea was brought in. Birkin poured out for them. It was 
strange how inviolable was the intimacy which existed between 
him and Hermione. Ursula felt that she was an outsider. 
The very tea-cups and the old silver was a bond between 
Hermione and Birkin. It seemed to belong to an old, past 
world which they had inhabited together, and in which Ursula 
was a foreigner. She was almost a parvenue in their old cul- 
tured milieu. Her convention was not their convention, their 
standards were not her standards. But theirs were established, 
they had the sanction and the grace of age. He and she 
together, Hermione and Birkin, were people of the same old 
tradition, the same withered deadening culture. And she, 
Ursula, was an intruder. So they always made her feel.. 

Hermione poured a little cream into a saucer. The simple 
way she assumed her rights in Birkin’s room maddened and 
discouraged Ursula. There was a fatality about it, as if it 
were bound to be. Hermione lifted the cat and put the cream 
before him. He planted his two paws on the edge of the table 
and bent his gracious young head to drink. 

‘‘Siccuro che capisce italiano,” sang Hermione, ‘non l’avra 
dimenticato, la lingua della Mamma.” 

She lifted the cat’s head with her long, slow, white, fingers, 
not letting him drink, holding him in her power. It was always 
the same, this joy in power she manifested, peculiarly in power 
over any male being. He blinked forbearingly, with a male, 
bored expression, licking his whiskers. Hermione laughed in 
her short, grunting fashion. 

“Ecco, il bravo regazzo, come é superbo, questo!” 

She made a vivid picture, so calm, and strange with the cat. 
She had a true static impressiveness, she was a social artist 
in some ways. 

The cat refused to look at her, indifferently avoided her 
fingers, and began to drink again, his nose down to the cream, 


WOMAN TO WOMAN 343 


perfectly balanced, as he lapped with his odd little click 

“Tt’s bad for him, teaching him to eat at table,” said 
Birkin. 

“Yes,” said Hermione, easily assenting. 

Then, looking down at the cat, she resumed her old, mock- 
ing, humorous sing-song. 

“Ti imparano fare brutte cose, brutte cose—” 

She lifted the Mino’s white chin on her fore-finger, slowly. 
The young cat looked round with a supremely forbearing air, 
avoided seeing anything, withdrew his chin, and began to wash 
his face with his paw. Hermione grunted her laughter, pleased. 

“Bel giovanotto—” she said. 

The cat reached forward again and put his fine white paw 
on the edge of the saucer. Hermione lifted it down with 
delicate slowness. ‘This deliberate, delicate carefulness of 
movement reminded Ursula of Gudrun. 

“No! None permesso di mettere il zampino nel tondinetto. 
Non piace al babbo. Un signor gatto cosi selvatico—!” 

And she kept her finger on the softly planted paw of the 
cat, and her voice had the same whimsical, humorous note of 
bullying. 

Ursula had her nose out of joint. She wanted to go away 
now. It all seemed no good. Hermione was established for 
ever, she herself was ephemeral and had not yet even arrived. 

“I will go now,” she said suddenly. 

Birkin looked at her almost in fear—he so dreaded her 
anger. “But there is no need for such hurry,” he said. 

“Yes,” she answered. “I will go.” And turning to Her- 
mione, before there was time to say any more, she held out 
her hand and said “Good-bye.” 

“Good-bye—” sang Hermione, detaining the hand. ‘Must 
you really go now?” 

“Yes, I think I'll go,” said Ursula, her face eh and averted 
from Hermione’ S eyes. 

“You think you will—” 

But Ursula had got her hand free. She turned to Birkin 
with a quick, almost jeering: “Good-bye,” and she was open- 
ing the door before he had time to do it for her. 


344 WOMEN IN LOVE 


When she got outside the house she ran down the road in — 
fury and agitation. It was strange, the unreasoning rage and 
violence Hermione roused in her, by her very presence. Ursula 
knew she gave herself away to the other woman, she knew she 
looked ill-bred, uncouth, exaggerated. But she did not care. 
She only ran up the road, lest she should go back and jeer 
in the faces of the two she had left behind. For they out- 
raged her, 


CHAPTER XXIII 
EXCURSE 


Next day Birkin sought Ursula out. It happened to be the 
half-day at the Grammar School. He appeared towards the 
end of the morning, and asked her, would she drive with him 
in the afternoon. She consented. But her face was closed 
and unresponding, and his heart sank. 

The afternoon was fine and dim. He was driving the motor- 
car, and she sat beside him. But still her face was closed 
against him, unresponding. When she became like this, like 
a wall against him, his heart contracted. 

His life now seemed so reduced, that he hardly cared any 
more. At moments it seemed to him he did not care a straw 
whether Ursula or Hermione or anybody else existed or did 
not exist. Why bother! Why strive for a coherent, satis- 
fied life? Why not drift on in a series of accidents—like a 
picaresque novel? Why not? Why bother about human rela- 
tionships? Why take them seriously—male or female? Why 
form any serious connections at all? Why not be casual, 
drifting along, taking all for what it was worth? 

And yet, still, he was damned and doomed to the old effort 
at serious living. 

“Look,” he said, “what I bought.” The car was running 
along a broad white road, between autumn trees. 

He gave her a little bit of screwed-up paper. She took it 
and opened it. 

“How lovely,” she cried. 

She examined the gift. 

“How perfectly lovely!” she cried again. “But why do 
you give them me?” She put the question offensively. 

His face flickered with bored irritation. He shrugged his 
shoulders slightly. | 

“I wanted to,” he said, coolly. 

“But why? Why should you?” 

345 


346 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Am I called on to find reasons?” he asked. 

There was a silence, whilst she examined the rings that had 
been screwed up in the paper. 

“T think they are beautiful,” she said, “especially this. This 
is wonderful— 

It was a round opal, red and fiery, set in a circle of tiny 
rubies. 

“You like that best?” he said. 

“T think I do.” 

“T like the sapphire,” he said. 

“This? > 

It was a rose-shaped, beautiful sapphire, with small bril- 
liants. 

“Yes,” she said, “it is lovely.” She held it in the light. 
“Yes, perhaps it is the best—” 

“The blue—” he said. 

“Yes, wonderful—” 

He suddenly swung the car out of the way of a farm-cart. 
It tilted on the bank. He was a careless driver, yet very 
quick. But Ursula was frightened. There was always that 
something regardless in him which terrified her. She suddenly 
felt he might kill her, by making some dreadful accident with 
the motor-car. For a moment she was stony with fear. 

“Isn’t it rather dangerous, the way you drive?” she asked 
him. 

“No, it isn’t dangerous,” he said. And then, after a pause: 
“Don’t you like the yellow ring at all?” 

_It was a squarish topaz set in a frame of steel, or some 
other similar mineral, finely wrought. 

“Yes,” she said, “I do like it. But why did you buy these 
rings?” 

“IT wanted them. They are second-hand.” 

“You bought them for yourself?” 

“No. Rings look wrong on my hands.” 

“Why did you buy them then?” 

“I bought them to give to you.” 


“But why? Surely you ought to give them to Hermione! 
You belong to her.” 


EXCURSE 347 


He did not answer. She remained with the jewels shut in 
her hand. She wanted to try them on her fingers, but some- 
thing in her would not let her. And moreover, she was afraid 
her hands were too large, she shrank from the mortification of 
a failure to put them on any but her little finger. They trav- 
elled in silence through the empty lanes. 

Driving in a motor-car excited her, she forgot his presence 
even. 

“Where are we?” she asked suddenly. 

*‘Not far from Worksop.” 

“And where are we going?” 

“Anywhere.” 

It was the answer she liked. 

She opened her hand to look at the rings. They gave her 
such pleasure, as they lay, the three circles, with their knotted 
jewels, entangled in her palm. She would have to try them 
on. She did so secretly, unwilling to let him see, so that he 
should not know her finger was too large for them. But he 
saw nevertheless. He always saw, if she wanted him not to. 
It was another of his hateful, watchful characteristics. 

Only the opal, with its thin wire loop, would go on her ring 
finger. And she was superstitious. No, there was ill-portent 
enough, she would not accept this ring from him in pledge. 

“Look,” she said, putting forward her hand, that was half- 
closed and shrinking. ‘“The others don’t fit me.” 

He looked at the red-glinting, soft stone, on her over- 
sensitive skin. 

“Ves,” he said. 

“But opals are unlucky, aren’t they?” she said wistfully. 

“No. I prefer unlucky things. Luck is vulgar. Who 
wants what duck would bring? I don’t.” 

“But why?” she laughed. 

And, consumed with a desire to see how the other rings 
would look on her hand, she put them on her little finger. 

“They can be made a little bigger,” he said. 

“Ycs,” she replied, doubtfully. And she sighed. She knew 
that, in accepting the rings, she was accepting a pledge. Yet 
fate seemed more than herself. She looked again at the jewels. 


348 WOMEN IN LOVE 


They were very beautiful to her eyes—not as ornament, or 
wealth, but as tiny fragments of loveliness. 

“I’m glad you bought them,” she said, putting her hand, 
half unwillingly, gently on his arm. 

He smiled, slightly. He wanted her to come to him. But 
he was angry at the bottom of his soul, and indifferent. He 
knew she had a passion for him, really. But it was not finally 
interesting. There were depths of passion when one became 
impersonal and indifferent, unemotional. Whereas.Ursula was 
still at the emotional personal level—always so abominably 
personal, He had taken her as he had never been taken him- 
self. He had taken her at the roots of her darkness and shame 
—like a demon, laughing over the fountain of mystic corrup- 
tion which was one of the sources of her being, laughing, 
shrugging, accepting, accepting finally. As for her, when 
would she so much go beyond herself as to accept him at the 
quick of death? 

She now became quite happy. The motor-car ran on, the 
afternoon was soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, 
analysing people and their motives—Gudrun, Gerald. He an- 
swered vaguely. He was not very much interested any more 
in personalities and in people—people were all different, but 
they were all enclosed in a definite limitation, he said; there 
were only about two great ideas, two great streams of activity, 
with various forms of reaction therefrom. The reactions were 
all varied in various people, but they followed a few great 
laws, and intrinsically there was no difference. They acted 
and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and 
once the laws, the great principles, were known, people were 
no longer mystically interesting. They were all essentially 
alike, the differences were only variations on a theme. None 
of them transcended the given terms. 

Ursula did not agree—people were still an adventure to 
her—but—perhaps not as much as she tried to persuade her- 
self. Perhaps there was something mechanical, now, in her 
interest. Perhaps also her interest was destructive, her analys- 
ing was a real tearing to pieces. There was an underspace 
in her where she did not care for people and their idiosyn- 


EXCURSE 340 


crasies, even to destroy them. She seemed to touch for a 
moment this undersilence in herself, she became still, and 
she turned for a moment purely to Birkin. 

“Won’t it be lovely to go home in the dark?” she said. “We 
might have tea rather late—shall we?—and have high tea? 
Wouldn’t that be rather nice?” 

“T promised to be at Shortlands for dinner,” he said. 

“But—it doesn’t matter—you can go to-morrow—” 

“Hermione is there,” he said, in rather an uneasy voice. 
“She is going away in two days. I suppose I ought to say 
good-bye to her. I shall never see her again.” 

Ursula drew away, closed in a violent silence. He knitted 
his brows, and his eyes began to sparkle again in anger. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked irritably. 

“No, I don’t care. Why should I? Why should I mind?” 
Her tone was jeering and offensive. 

“That’s what I ask myself,” he said, “why should you 
mind! But you seem to.” His brows were tense with violent 
irritation. | 

“T assure you I don’t, I don’t mind in the least. Go where 
you belong—it’s what I want you to do.” 

“Ah, you fool!” he cried, “with your ‘go where you belong.’ 
It’s finished between Hermione and me. She means much 
more to you, if it comes to that, than she does to me. For 
you can only revolt in pure reaction from her—and to ‘be her 
opposite is to be her counterpart.” 

“Ah, opposite!” cried Ursula. “I know your dodges. I 
am not taken in by your word-twisting. You belong to Her- 
mione and her dead show. Well, if you do, you do. I don’t 
blame you. But then you’ve nothing to do with me.” 

In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the 
car, and they sat there, in the middle of the country lane, to 
have it out. It was a crisis of war between them, so they 
did not see the ridiculousness of their situation. 

“If you weren’t a fool, if only you weren’t a fool,” he cried 
in bitter despair, “you’d see that one could be decent, even 
when one has been wrong. I was wrong to go on all those 
years with Hermione—it was a deathly process. But after all, 


350 WOMEN IN LOVE 


one can have a little human decency. But no, you would tear 
my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of Her- 
mione’s name.” 

“I jealous! J—jealous! You are mistaken if you think 
that. I’m not jealous in the least of Hermione, she is nothing 
to me, not ¢that/” And Ursula snapped her fingers. ‘‘No, it’s 
you who are a liar. It’s you who must return, like a dog to 
his vomit. It is what Hermione stands for that I hate. I 
hate it. It is lies, it is false, it is death. But you want it, you 
can’t help it, you can’t help yourself. You belong to that 
old, deathly way of living—then go back to it. But don’t 
come to me, for I’ve nothing to do with it.” 

And in the stress of her violent emotion, she got down from 
the car and went to the hedgerow, picking unconsciously some 
flesh-pink spindleberries, some of which were burst, showing 
their orange seeds. 

“Ah, you are a fool,” he cried, bitterly, with some con- 
tempt. 

“Yes, am. I ama fool. And thank God for it. I’m too 
big a fool to swallow your cleverness. God be praised. You 
go to your women—go to them—they are your sort—you’ve 
always had a string of them trailing after you—and you always 
will. Go to your spiritual brides—but don’t come to me as 
well, because I’m not having any, thank you. You're not 
satisfied, are you? Your spiritual brides can’t give you what 
you want, they aren’t common and fleshy enough for you, 
are ‘they? So you come to me, and keep them in the back- 
ground! You will marry me for daily use. But you'll keep 
yourself well provided with spiritual brides in the background. 
I know your dirty little game.” Suddenly a flame ran over 
her, and she stamped her foot madly on the road, and he 
winced, afraid that she would strike him. “And J, I’m not 
spiritual enough, /’m not as spiritual as that Hermione—!” 
Her brows knitted, her eyes blazed like a tiger’s. ‘Then go 
to her, that’s all I say, go to her, go. Ha, she spiritual— 
spiritual, she! A dirty materialist as she is. She spiritual? 
What does she care for, what is her spirituality? What is it?” 
Her fury seemed to blaze out and burn his face. He shrank a 


EXCURSE 351 


little. “I tell you it’s dirt, dirt, and nothing but dirt. And 
it’s dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is that spir- 
itual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She’s 
a fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. And all so 
sordid. What does she work out to, in the end, with all her 
social passion, as you call it. Social passion—what social 
passion has she?—show it me!—where is it? She wants 
.petty, immediate power, she wants the illusion that she is a 
great woman, that is all. In her soul she’s a devilish unbeliever, 
common as dirt. That’s what she is at the bottom. And 
all the rest is pretence—but you love it. You love the sham 
spirituality, it’s your food. And why? Because of the dirt 
underneath. Do you think I don’t know the foulness of your 
sex life—and hers?—I do. And it’s that foulness you want, 
you liar. Then have it, have it. You're such a liar.” 

She turned away, spasmodically tearing the twigs of spindle- 
berry from the hedge, and fastening them, with vibrating 
fingers, in the bosom of her coat. 

He stood watching in silence. A wonderful tenderness 
burned in him, at the sight of her quivering, so sensitive fingers: 
and at the same time he was full of rage and callousness. 

“This is a degrading exhibition,” he said coolly. 

“Yes, degrading indeed,” she said. “But more to me than 
to you.” 

“Since you choose to degrade yourself,” he said. Again 
the flash came over her face, the yellow lights concentrated in 
her eyes. 

“You!” she cried. “You! You truth-lover! You purity- 
monger! It stinks, your truth and your purity. It stinks of 
the offal you feed on, you scavenger dog, you eater of corpses. 
You are foul, fou/—and you must know it. Your purity, your 
candour, your goodness—yes, thank you, we’ve had some. 
What you are is a foul, deathly thing, obscene, that’s what you 
are, obscene and perverse. You, and love! You may well 
say, you don’t want love. No, you want yourself, and dirt, 
and death—that’s what you want. You are so perverse, so 
death-eating. And then—” 


352 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“There’s a bicycle coming,” he said, writhing under her 
loud denunciation. 

She glanced down the road. 

“T don’t care,” she cried. 

Nevertheless she was silent. The cyclist, having heard the 
voices raised in altercation, glanced curiously at the man, and 
the woman, and at the standing motor-car as he passed. 

Afternoon, ” he said, cheerfully. 

“Good-afternoon, a replied Birkin coldly. 

They were silent as the man passed into the distance. 

A clearer look had come over Birkin’s face. He knew she 
was in the main right. He knew he was perverse, so spiritual 
on the one hand, and in some strange way, degraded, on the 
other. But was she herself any better? Was anybody any 
better?” 

“It may all be true, lies and stink and all,” he said. “But 
Hermione’s spiritual intimacy is no rottener than your emo- 
tional-jealous intimacy. One can preserve the decencies, even 
to one’s enemies: for one’s own sake. : Hermione is my enemy 
—to her last breath! That’s why I must bow her off the 
field.” 

“You! You and your enemies and your bows! A pretty 
picture you make of yourself. But it takes nobody in but 
yourself. I jealous! I! What I say,” her voice sprang into 
flame, “I say because it is true, do you see, because you are 
you, a foul and false liar, a whited sepulchre. That’s why I 
say it. And you hear it.” 

“And be grateful,” he added, with a satirical grimace. 

“Yes,” she cried, “and if you have a spark of decency in 
you, be grateful.” 

“Not having a spark of decency, however—” he retorted. 

“No,” she cried, “you haven’t a spark. And so you can 
go your way, and I’ll go mine. It’s no good, not the slightest. 
So you can leave me now, I don’t want to go any further with 
you—leave me—” 

“You don’t even know where you are,” he said. 

“Oh, don’t bother, I assure you I shall be all right. I’ve 
got ten shillings in my purse, and that will take me back from 


a ee 


EXCURSE 353 


anywhere you have brought me to.” She hesitated. The rings 
were still on her fingers, two on her little finger, one on her 
ring finger. Still she hesitated. 

“Very good,” he said. “The only hopeless thing is a fool.” 

“You are quite right,” she said. 

Still she hesitated. Then an ugly, malevolent look came over 
her face, she pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them 
at him. One touched his face, the others hit his coat, and 
they scattered into the mud. 

“And take your rings,” she said, “and go and buy yourself 
a female elsewhere—there are plenty to be had, who will be 
quite glad to share your spiritual mess,—or to have your 
physical mess, and leave your spiritual mess to Hermione.” 

With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He 
stood motionless, watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She 
was sullenly picking and pulling at the twigs of the hedge as 
she passed. She grew smaller, she seemed to pass out of his 
sight. A darkness came over his mind. Only a small, mechan- 
ical speck of consciousness hovered near him. 

He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He 
gave up his old position. He went and sat on the bank. No 
doubt Ursula was right. It was true, really, what she said. 
He knew that his spirituality was concomitant of a process of 
depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There really 
was a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him—especially 
when it was translated spiritually. But then he knew it—he 
knew it, and had done. And was not Ursula’s way of emotional 
intimacy, emotional and physical, was it not just as danger- 
ous as Hermione’s abstract spiritual intimacy? Fusion, fusion, 
this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and 
most men insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible any- 
how, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional 
body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, to which 
all men must come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the 
bath of birth, to which all men must come! And both were 
horrible. Why could they not remain individuals, limited by 
their own limits? Why this dreadful all-comprehensiveness, 
this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being free, 


354 WOMEN IN LOVE 


why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon 
oneself utterly to the moments, but not to any other being. 

He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of 
the road. He picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously 
on his hands. They were the little tokens of the reality of 
beauty, the reality of happiness in warm creation. But he 
had made his hands all dirty and gritty. 

There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of 
consciousness that had persisted there like an obsession was 
broken, gone, his life was dissolved in darkness over his limbs 
and his body. But there was a point of anxiety in his heart 
now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed lightly and 
regularly like an infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the 
touch of responsibility. 

_ She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily 

under the high hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did 
not move, he did not look again. He was as if asleep, at 
peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed. 

She came up and stood before him, hanging her head. 

- “See what a flower I found you,” she said, wistfully holding 
a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw 
the clump of coloured bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: 
also her hands, with their over-fine, over-sensitive skin. 

“Pretty!” he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the 
flower. Everything had become simple again, quite simple, 
the complexity gone into nowhere. But he badly wanted to 
cry: except that he was weary and bored by emotion. 

Then a hot passion of tenderness for her filled his heart. 
He stood up and looked into her face. It was new and oh, 
so delicate in its luminous wonder and fear. He put his arms 
round her, and she hid her face on his shoulder. 

It was peace, just simple peace, as he stood folding her 
quietly there on the open lane. It was peace at last. The 
old, detestable world of tension had passed away at last, his 
soul was strong and at ease. 

She looked up at him. The wonderful yellow light in her 
eyes now was soft and yielded, they were at peace with each 


_ EXCURSE 355 


other. He kissed her, softly, many, many times. A laugh 
came into her eyes. 

“Did I abuse you?” she asked. 

He smiled too, and took her hand, that was so soft and 
given. 

“Never mind,” she said, “it is all for the good.” He kissed 
her again, softly, many times. 

“Tsn’t it?” she said. 

“Certainly,” he replied. “Wait! I shall have my own 
back.” 

She laughed suddenly, with a wild catch in her voice, and 
flung her arms around him. 

“You are mine, my love, aren’t you?” she cried straining 
him close. © 

“Yes,” he said, softly. 

His voice was so soft and final, she went very still, as if 
under a fate which had taken her. Yes, she acquiesced—but 
it was accomplished without her acquiescence. He was kiss- 
ing her quietly, repeatedly, with a soft, still happiness that 
almost made her heart stop beating. 

“My love!” she cried, lifting her face and looking with 
frightened, gentle wonder of bliss. Was it all real? But his 
eyes were beautiful and soft and immune from stress or excite- 
ment, beautiful and smiling lightly to her, smiling with her. 
She hid her face on his shoulder, hiding before him, because 
he could see her so completely. She knew he loved her, and 
she was afraid, she was in a strange element, a new heaven 
round about her. She wished he were passionate, because in 
passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as 
space is more frightening than force. 

Again, quickly, she lifted her head. 

“Do you love me?” she said, quickly, impulsively. 

“Yes,” he replied, not heeding her emotion, only her stillness. 

She knew it was true. She broke away. 

“So you ought,” she said, turning round to look at the road. 
“Did you find the rings?” 

“Ves,” 

“Where are they?” 


356 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“In my pocket.” 

She put her hand into his pocket and took them out. 

She was restless. 

“Shall we go?” she said. 

“Yes,” he answered. And they mounted to the car once 
more, and left behind them this memorable battle-field. 

They drifted through the wild, late afternoon, in a beautiful 
motion that was smiling and transcendent. His mind was 
sweetly at ease, the life flowed through him as from some new 
fountain, he was as if born out of the cramp of a womb. 

“Are you happy?” she asked him, in her strange, delighted 
way. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“So am I,” she cried in sudden ecstasy, putting her arm 
round him and clutching him violently against her, as he 
steered the motor-car. 

“Don’t drive much more,” she said. “I don’t want you to 
be always doing something.” 

“No,” he said. “We'll finish this little trip, and then we'll 
be free.” 

“We will, my love, we will,” she cried in delight, kissing 
him as he turned to her. 

He drove on in a strange new wakefulness, the tension of 
his consciousness broken, He seemed to be conscious all over, 
all his body awake with a simple, glimmering awareness, as 
if he had just come awake, like a thing that is born, like a 
bird when it comes out of an egg, into a new universe. 

They dropped down a long hill in the dusk, and suddenly 
Ursula recognised on her right hand, below in the hollow, the 
form of Southwell Minster. 

“Are we here!” she cried with pleasure. 

The rigid, sombre, ugly cathedral was settling under the 
gloom of the coming night, as they entered the narrow town, 
the golden lights showed like slabs of revelation, in the shop- 
windows. 

“Father came here with mother,” she said, “when they first 
knew each other. He loves it—he loves the Minster. Do 
you?” , 


EXCURSE 357 


“Ves. It looks like quartz crystals sticking up out of the 
dark hollow. We'll have our high tea at the Saracen’s Head.” 

As they descended, they heard the Minster bells Playing 
a hymn, when the hour had struck six. 


“Glory to thee my God this night 
For all the blessing of the light— 


So, to Ursula’s ear, the tune fell out, drop by drop, from the 
unseen sky on to the dusky town. It was like dim, bygone 
centuries sounding. It was all so far off. She stood in the 
old yard of the inn, smelling of straw and stables and petrol. 
Above, she could see the first stars. What was it all? This 
was no actual world, it was the dream-world of one’s childhood 
—a great circumscribed reminiscence. ‘The world had become 
unreal. She herself was a strange, transcendent reality. 

They sat together in a little parlour by the fire. 

“Ts it true?” she said, wondering. 

“What? ? 

“Everything—is everything true?” 

“The best is true,” he said, grimacing at her. 

“Ts it?” she replied, laughing, but unassured. 

She looked at him. He seemed still so separate. New 
eyes were opened in her soul. She saw a strange creature from 
another world, in him. It was as if she were enchanted, and 
everything were metamorphosed. She recalled again the old 
magic of the Book of Genesis, where the sons of God saw the 
daughters of men, that they were fair. And he was one of 
these, one of these strange creatures from the beyond, looking 
down at her, and seeing she was fair. 

He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that 
was upturned exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, 
glinting faintly golden with the dew of the first light. And 
he was smiling faintly as if there were no speech in the world, 
save the silent delight of flowers in each other. Smilingly they 
delighted in each other’s presence, pure presence, not to be 
thought of, even known. But his eyes had a faintly ironical 
contraction. 

And she was drawn to him strangely, as in a spell. Kneeling 


358 WOMEN IN LOVE 


on the hearth-rug before him, she put her arms round his 
loins, and put her face against his thighs. Riches! Riches! 
She was overwhelmed with a sense of a heavenful of riches. 

“We love each other,” she said in delight. 

“More than that,” he answered, looking down at her with 
his glimmering, easy face. 

Unconsciously, with her sensitive finger-tips, she was tracing 
the back of his thighs, following some mysterious life-flow 
there. She had discovered something, something more than 
wonderful, more wonderful than life itself. It was the strange 
mystery of his life-motion, there, at the back of his thighs, 
down the flanks. It was a strange reality of his being, the 
very stuff of being, there in the straight downflow of the thighs. 
It was here she discovered him one of the sons of God such 
as were in the beginning of the world, not a man, something 
other, something more. 

This was release at last. She had had lovers, she had known 
passion. But this was neither love nor passion. It was the 
daughters of men coming back to the sons of God, the strange 
inhuman sons of God who are in the beginning. 

Her face was now one dazzle of released, golden light, as 
she looked up at him, and laid her hands full on his thighs, 
behind, as he stood before her. He looked down at her with 
a rich bright brow like a diadem above his eyes. She was 
beautiful as a new marvellous flower opened at his knees, a 
paradisal flower she was, beyond womanhood, such a flower 
of luminousness. Yet something was tight and unfree in him. 
He did not like this crouching, this radiance—not altogether. 

It was all achieved, for her. She had found one of the 
sons of God from the Beginning, and he had found one of 
the first most luminous daughters of men. 

She traced with her hands the line of his loins and thighs, 
at the back, and a living fire ran through her, from him, darkly. 
It was a dark flood of electric passion she released from him, 
drew into herself. She had established a rich new circuit, a 
new current of passional electric energy, between the two of 
them, released from the darkest poles of the body and estab- 
lished in perfect circuit. It was a dark fire of electricity that 


EXCURSE 359 


rushed from him to her, and flooded them both with rich 
peace, satisfaction. 

“My love,” she cried, lifting her face to him, her eyes, her 
mouth open in transport. 

“My love,” he answered, bending and kissing her, always 
kissing her. 

She closed her hands over the full, rounded body of his loins, 
as he stooped over her, she seemed to touch the quick of the 
mystery of darkness that was bodily him. She seemed to faint 
beneath, and he seemed to faint, stooping over her. It was a 
perfect passing away for both of them, and at the same time 
the most intolerable accession into being, the marvellous fulness 
of immediate gratification, overwhelming, outflooding from the 
source of the deepest life-force, the darkest, deepest, strangest 
life-source of the human body, at the back and base of the 
loins. 

After a lapse of stillness, after the rivers of strange dark fluid 
richness had passed over her, flooding, carrying away her mind 
and flooding down her spine and down her knees, past her feet, 
a strange flood, sweeping away everything and leaving her an 
essential new being, she was left quite free, she was free in 
complete ease, her complete self. So she rose, stilly and blithe, 
smiling at him. He stood before her, glimmering, so awfully 
real, that her heart almost stopped beating. He stood there 
in his strange, whole body, that had its marvellous fountains, 
like the bodies of the sons of God who were in the beginning. 
There were strange fountains of his body, more mysterious and 
potent than any she had imagined or known, more satisfying, 
ah, finally, mystically-physically satisfying. She had thought 
there was no source deeper than the phallic source. And now, 
behold, from the smitten rock of the man’s body, from the 
strange marvellous flanks and thighs, deeper, further in mystery 
than the phallic source, came the floods of incttable darkness 
and ineffable riches. 

They were glad, and they could forget perfectly. They 
laughed, and went to the meal provided. There was a venison 
pasty, of all things, a large broad-faced cut ham, eggs and 
cresses and red beet-root, and medlars and apple-tart, and tea, 


360 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What good things!” she cried with pleasure. “How noble 
it looks!—shall I pour out the tea?—” 

She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these 
public duties, such as giving tea. But to-day she forgot, she 
was at her ease, entirely forgetting to have misgivings. The 
tea-pot poured beautifully from a proud slender spout. Her 
eyes were warm with smiles as she gave him his tea. She had 
learned at last to be still and perfect. 

“Everything is ours,” she said to him. 

“Everything,” he answered. 

She gave a queer little crowing sound of triumph. 

“T’m so glad!” she cried, with unspeakable relief. 

“So am I,” he said. “But I’m thinking we’d better get out 
of our responsibilities as quick as we can.” 

“What responsibilities?” she asked, wondering. 

“We must drop our jobs, like a shot.” 

A new understanding dawned into her face. 

“Of course,” she said, “‘there’s that.” 

“We must get out,” he said. ‘“There’s nothing for it but 
to get out, quick.” 

She looked at him doubtfully across the table. 

“But where?” she said. 

“T don’t know,” he said. ‘We'll just wander about for a 
bit.” 

Again she looked at him quizzically. 

“T should be perfectly happy at the Mill,” she said. 

“It’s very near the old thing,” he said. ‘Let us wander a 
bit.” 

His voice could be so soft and happy-go-lucky, it went 
through her veins like an exhilaration. Nevertheless she 
dreamed of a valley, and wild gardens, and peace. She had a 
desire too for splendour—an aristocratic extravagant splendour. 
Wandering seemed to her like restlessness, dissatisfaction. 

“Where will you wander to?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. I feel as if I would just meet you and we’d 
set off—just towards the distance.” 

“But where can one go?” she asked anxiously. “After all, 
there is only the world, and none of it is very distant.” 


EXCURSE 361 


“Still,” he said, “I should like to go with you—nowhere. It 
would be rather wandering just to nowhere. That’s the place 
to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the 
world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.” 

Still she meditated. 

“You see, my love,” she said, “I’m so afraid that while 
we are only people, we’ve got to take the world that’s given 
—because there isn’t any other.” 

“Yes there is,” he said. ‘“There’s somewhere where we can 
be free—somewhere where one needn’t wear much clothes— 
none even—where one meets a few people who have gone 
through enough, and can take things for granted—where you 
be yourself, without bothering. There is somewhere—there 
are one or two people—” 

“But where—?” she sighed. 

“Somewhere—anywhere. Let’s wander off. That’s the thing 
to do—let’s wander off.” 

“Yes—” she said, thrilled at the thought of travel. But to 
her it was only travel. 

“To be free,” he said. “To be free, in a free place, with a 
few other people!” 

“Yes,” she said wistfully. Those “few other people” 
depressed her. ) 

“Tt isn’t really a locality, though,” he said. “It’s a perfected 
relation between you and me, and others—the perfect relation 
—so that we are free together.” 

“It is, my love, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s you and me. It’s 
you and me, isn’t it?” She stretched out her arms to him. He 
went across and stooped to kiss her face. Her arms closed 
round him again, her hands spread upon his shoulders, moving 
slowly there, moving slowly on his back, down his back slowly, 
with a strange recurrent, rhythmic motion, yet moving slowly 
down, pressing mysteriously over his loins, over his flanks. 
The sense of the awfulness of riches that could never be 
impaired flooded her mind like a swoon, a death in most 
marvellous possession, mystic-sure. She possessed him so 
utterly and intolerably, that she herself lapsed out. And yet 


362 WOMEN IN LOVE 


she was only sitting still in the chair, with her hands pressed 
upon him, and lost. 

Again he softly kissed her. 

‘“‘We shall never go apart again,”’ he murmured quietly. And 
she did not speak, but only pressed her hands firmer down 
upon the source of darkness in him. 

They decided, when they woke again from the pure swoon, 
to write their resignations from the world of work there and 
then. She wanted this. 

He rang the bell, and ordered note-paper without a printed 
address. The waiter cleared the table. 

“Now then,” he said, “yours first. Put your home address, 
and the date—then ‘Director of Education, Town Hall—Sir—’ 
Now then!—TI don’t know how one really stands—I suppose 
one could get out of it in less than a month—Anyhow ‘Sir—I 
beg to resign my post as class-mistress in the Willey Green 
Grammar School. I should be very grateful if you would 
liberate me as soon as possible, without waiting for the expira- 
tion of the month’s notice.’ That’lldo. Have you got it? Let 
me look. ‘Ursula Brangwen’ Good! Now I'll write mine. I 
ought to give them three months, but I can plead health. I 
can arrange it all right.” 

He sat and wrote out his formal resignation. 

“Now,” he said, when the envelopes were sealed and ad- 
dressed, “shall we post them here, both together? I know 
Jackie will say, “Here’s a coincidence!’ when he receives them 
in all their identity. Shall we let him say it, or not?” 

“T don’t care,”’ she said. 

“No—?” he said, pondering. 

“Tt doesn’t matter, does it?” she said. 

“Yes,” he replied. ‘Their imaginations shall not work on 
us. I'll post yours here, mine after. I cannot be implicated 
in their imaginings.” 

He looked at her with his strange, non-human singleness. 

“Yes, you are right,” she said. 

She lifted her face to him, all shining and open. It was as 
if he might enter straight into the source of her radiance. His 
face became a little distracted. 


EXCURSE 363 


“Shall we go?” he said. 

“As you like,” she replied. 

They were soon out of the little town, and running through 
the uneven lanes of the country. Ursula nestled near him, 
into his constant warmth, and watched the pale-lit revelation 
racing ahead, the visible night. Sometimes it was a wide old 
road, with grass-spaces on either side, flying magic and elfin 
in the greenish illumination, sometimes it was trees looming 
overhead, sometimes it was bramble bushes, sometimes the 
walls of a crew-yard and the butt of a barn. 

“Are you going to Shortlands to dinner?” Ursula asked 
him suddenly. He started. 

“Good God!” he said. ‘Shortlands! Never again. Not 
that. Besides we should be too late.” 

“Where are we going then—to the Mill?” 

“Tf you like. Pity to go anywhere on this good dark night. 
Pity to come out of it, really. Pity we can’t stop in the good 
darkness. It is better than anything ever would be—this good 
immediate darkness.” 

She sat wondering. The car lurched and swayed. She knew 
there was no leaving him, the darkness held them both and 
contained them, it was not to be surpassed. Besides she had a 
full mystic knowledge of his suave loins of darkness, dark-clad 
and suave, and. in this knowledge there was some of the 
inevitability and the beauty of fate, fate which one asks for, 
which one accepts in full. 

He sat still like an Egyptian Pharaoh, driving the car. He 
felt as if he were seated in immemorial potency, like the great 
carven statues*of real Egypt, as real and as fulfilled with 
subtle strength, as these are, with a vague inscrutable smile 
on the lips. He knew what it was to have the strange and 
magical current of force in his back and loins, and down his 
legs, force so perfect that it stayed him immobile, and left his 
face subtly, mindlessly smiling. He knew what it was to be 
awake and potent in that other basic mind, the deepest physical 
mind. And from this source he had a pure and magic control, 
magical, mystical, a force in darkness, like electricity. 

It was very difficult to speak, it was so perfect to sit in this 


364 WOMEN IN LOVE 


pure living silence, subtle, full of unthinkable knowledge and 
unthinkable force, upheld immemorially in timeless force, like 
the immobile, supremely potent Egyptians, seated forever in 
their living, subtle silence. 

“We need not go home,” he said. “This car has seats that 
let down and make a bed, and we can lift the hood.” 

She was glad and frightened. She cowered near to him. 

“But what about them at home?” she said. 

“Send a telegram.” 

Nothing more was said. They ran on in silence. But with 
a sort of second consciousness he steered the car towards a 
destination. For he had the free intelligence to direct his own 
ends. . His arms and his breast and his head were rounded and 
living like those of the Greek, he had not the unawakened 
straight arms of the Egyptian, nor the sealed, slumbering head. 
A lambent intelligence played secondarily above his pure 
Egyptian concentration in darkness. 

They came to a village that lined along the road. The 
car crept slowly along, until he saw the post-office. Then he 
pulled up. 

“T will send a telegram to your father,” he said. “I will 
merely say ‘spending the night in town,’ shall I?” 

“Ves,” she answered. She did not want to be disturbed into 
taking thought. 

She watched him move into the post-office. It was also a 
shop, she saw. Strange, he was. Even as he went into the 
lighted, public place he remained dark and magic, the living 
silence seemed the body of reality in him, subtle, potent, 
indiscoverable. There he was! In a strange uplift of elation 
she saw him, the being never to be revealed, awful in its 
potency, mystic and real. This dark, subtle reality of him, 
never to be translated, liberated her into perfection, her own 
perfected being. She too was dark and fulfilled in silence. 

He came out, throwing some packages into the car. 

“There is some bread, and cheese, and raisins, and apples, 
and hard chocolate,’ he said, in his voice that was as if laugh- 
ing, because of the unblemished stillness and force which was 
the reality in him. She would have to touch him. To speak, 


EXCURSE 365 


to see, was nothing. It was a travesty to look and to 
comprehend the man there. Darkness and silence must fall 
perfectly on her, then she could know mystically, in unrevealed 
touch. She must lightly, mindlessly connect with him, have the 
knowledge which is death of knowledge, the reality of surety 
in not-knowing. 

Soon they had run on again into the darkness. She did not 
ask where they were going, she did not care. She sat in a 
fulness and a pure potency that was like apathy, mindless and 
immobile. She was next to him, and hung in a pure rest, as a 
star is hung, balanced unthinkably. Still there-remained a 
dark lambency of anticipation. She would touch him. With 
perfect fine finger-tips of reality she would touch the reality in 
him, the suave, pure, untranslatable reality of his loins of 
darkness. To touch, mindlessly in darkness, to come in pure 
touching upon the living reality of him, his suave perfect loins 
and thighs of darkness, this was her sustaining anticipation. 

And he too waited in the magical steadfastness of suspense, 
for her to take this knowledge of him as he had taken it of 
her. He knew her darkly, with the fullness of dark knowledge. 
Now she would know him, and he too would be liberated. He 
would be night-free, like an Egyptian, steadfast in perfectly 
suspended equilibrium, pure mystic nodality of physical being. 
They would give each other this star-equilibrium which alone 
is freedom. 

She saw that they were running among trees—great old 
trees with dying bracken undergrowth. The palish, gnarled 
trunks showed ghostly, and like old priests in the hovering dis- 
tance, the fern rose magical and mysterious. It was a night 
all darkness, with low cloud. The motor-car advanced slowly. 

“Where are we?” she whispered. 

“In Sherwood Forest.” 

It was evident he knew the place. He drove softly, watching. 
Then they came to a green road between the trees. They 
turned cautiously round, and were advancing between the oaks 
of the forest, down a green lane. The green lane widened into 
a little circle of grass, where there was a small trickle of water 
at the bottom of a sloping bank. The car stopped. 


366 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“We will stay here,” he said, “and put out the lights.” 

He extinguished the lamps at once, and it was pure night, 
with shadows of trees like realities of other, nightly being. 
He threw a rug on to the bracken, and they sat in stillness and 
mindless silence. There were faint sounds from the wood, but 
no disturbance, no possible disturbance, the world was under 
a strange ban, a new mystery had subervened. They threw 
off their clothes, and he gathered her to him, and found her, 
found the pure lambent reality of her forever invisible flesh. 
Quenched, inhuman, his fingers upon her unrevealed nudity 
were the fingers of silence upon silence, the body of mysterious 
night upon the body of mysterious night, the night masculine 
and feminine, never to be seen with the eye, or known with 
the mind, only known as a palpable revelation of mystic 
otherness. 

She had her desire of him, she touched, she received the 
maximum of unspeakable communication in touch, dark, subtle, 
positively silent, a magnificent gift and give again, a perfect 
acceptance and yielding, a mystery, the reality of that which 
can never be known, mystic, sensual reality that can never be 
transmuted into mind content, but remains outside, living body 
ot darkness and silence and subtlety, the mystic body of real- 
ity. She had her desire fulfilled. He had his desire fulfilled. 
For she was to him what he was to her, the immemorial mag- 
nificence of mystic, palpable, real otherness. 

They slept the chilly night through under the hood of the 
car, a night of unbroken sleep. It was already high day when 
he awoke. They looked at each other and laughed, then 
looked away, filled with darkness and secrecy. ‘Then they 
kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night. It was 
so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark real- 
ity, that they were afraid to seem to remember, They hid 
away the remembrance and the knowledge. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
DEATH AND LOVE 


Tuomas Cricu died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed im- 
possible to everybody that the thread of life could be drawn 
out so thin, and yet not break. The sick man lay unutter- 
ably weak and spent, kept alive by morphia and by drinks, 
which he sipped slowly. He was only half conscious—a thin 
strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death with 
the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral, 
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him. 

Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an 
effort to him now. Every morning Gerald went into the room, 
hoping to find his father passed away at last. Yet always he 
saw the same transparent face, the same dread dark hair on 
the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate dark eyes, which 
seemed to be decomposing into formless darkness, having only 
a tiny grain of vision within them. 

And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there 
passed through Gerald’s bowels a burning stroke of revolt, 
that seemed to resound through his whole being, threatening to 
break his mind with its clangour, and making him mad. 

Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with life, 
gleaming in his blondness. The gleaming blondness of his 
strange, imminent being put the father into a fever of fretful 
irritation. He could not bear to meet the uncanny, downward 
look of Gerald’s blue eyes. But it was only for a moment. 
Each on the brink of departure, the father and son looked at 
each other, then parted. 

For a long time Gerald preserved a perfect sang froid, he 
remained quite collected. But at last, fear undermined him. 
He was afraid of some horrible collapse in himself. He had to 
stay and see this thing through. Some perverse will made him 
watch his father drawn over the borders of life. And yet, 


367 


368 WOMEN IN LOVE 


now, every day, the great red-hot stroke of horrified fear 
through the bowels of the son struck a further inflammation. 
Gerald went about all day with a tendency to cringe, as if 
* there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the nape 
of his neck. 

There was no escape—he was bound up with his father, he 
had to see him through. And the father’s will never relaxed 
or yielded to death. It would have to snap when death at last 
snapped it,—if it did not persist after a physical death. In 
the same way, the will of the son never yielded. He stood firm 
and immune, he was outside this death and this dying. 

It was a trial by ordeal. Could he stand and see his father 
slowly dissolve and disappear in death, without once yielding 
his will, without once relenting before the omnipotence of death? 
Like a Red Indian undergoing torture, Gerald would experience 
the whole process of slow death without wincing or flinching. 
He even triumphed in it. He somehow wanted this death, 
even forced it. It was as if he himself were dealing the death, 
even when he most recoiled in horror. Still, he would deal it, 
he would triumph through death. 

But in the stress of this ordeal, Gerald too lost his hold 
on the outer, daily life. That which was much to him, came 
to mean nothing. Work, pleasure—it was all left behind. He 
went on more or less mechanically with his business but this 
activity was all extraneous. The real activity was this ghastly 
wrestling for death in his own soul. And his own will should 
triumph. Come what might, he would not bow down or sub- 
mit or acknowledge a master. He had no master in death. 

But as the fight went on, and all that he had been and was 
continued to be destroyed, so that life was a hollow shell all 
round him, roaring and clattering like the sound of the sea, 
a noise in which he participated externally, and inside this 
hollow shell was all the darkness and fearful space of death, he 
knew he would have to find reinforcements, otherwise he would 
collapse inwards upon the great dark void which circled at the , 
centre of his soul. His will held his outer life, his outer mind, 
his outer being unbroken and unchanged. But the pressure 
was too great. He would have to find something to make goed 


DEATH AND LOVE 369 


the equilibrium. Something must come with him into the hol- 
low void of death in his soul, fill it up, and so equalise the 
pressure within to the pressure without. For day by day he 
felt more and more like a bubble filled with darkness, round 
which whirled the iridescence of his consciousness, and upon 
which the pressure of the outer world, the outer life, roared 
vastly. 

In this extremity his instinct led him to Gudrun. He threw 
away everything now—he only wanted the relation established 
with her. He would follow her to the studio, to be near her, 
to talk to her. He would stand about the room, aimlessly pick- 
ing up the implements, the lumps of clay, the little figures she 
had cast—they were whimsical and grotesque—looking at 
them without perceiving them. And she felt him following 
her, dogging her heels like a doom. She held away from him, 
and yet she knew he drew always a little nearer, a little nearer. 

“T say,” he said to her one evening, in an odd, unthinking, 
uncertain way, “won’t you stay to dinner to-night? I wish 
you would.” 

She started slightly. He spoke to her like a man making a 
‘request of another man. 

“They'll be expecting me at home,” she said. 

“Oh, they won’t mind, will they?” he said. “I should be 
awfully glad if you’d stay.” 

Her long silence gave consent at last. 

“Tl tell Thomas, shall I?” he said. 

“T must go almost immediately after dinner,” she said. 

It was a dark, cold evening. There was no fire in the draw- 
ing-room, they sat in the library. He was mostly silent, ab- 
sent, and Winifred talked little. But when Gerald did rouse 
himself, he smiled and was pleasant and ordinary with her. 
Then there came over him again the long blanks, of which he 
was not aware. 

She was very much attracted by him. He looked so pre- 
occupied, and his strange, blank silences, which she could not 
read, moved her and made her wonder over him, made her 
feel reverential towards him. 

But he was very kind. He gave her the best things at the 


370 WOMEN IN LOVE 


table, he had a bottle of slightly sweet, delicious golden wine 
brought out for dinner, knowing she would prefer it to the 
burgundy. She felt herself esteemed, needed almost. 

As they took coffee in the library, there was a soft, very 
soft knocking at the door. He started, and called “Come in.” 
The timbre of his voice, like something vibrating at high pitch, 
unnerved Gudrun. A nurse in white entered, half hovering in 
the doorway like a shadow. She was very good-looking, but 
strangely enough, shy and self-mistrusting. 

“The doctor would like to speak to you, Mr. Crich,” she 
said, in her low, discreet voice. 

“The doctor!” he said, starting up. ‘Where is he?” 

“He is in the dining room.” 

“Tell him I’m coming.” 

He drank up his coffee, and followed the nurse, who had 
dissolved like a shadow. 

“Which nurse was that?” asked Gudrun... 

“Miss Inglis—I like her best,” replied Winifred. 

After a while Gerald came back, looking absorbed by his 
own thoughts, and having some of that tension and abstrac- 
tion which is seen in a slightly drunken man. He did not say 
what the doctor had wanted him for, but stood before the fire, 
with his hands behind his back, and his face open and as if 
rapt. Not that he was really thinking—he was only arrested 
in pure suspense inside himself, and thoughts wafted through 
his mind without order. 

“T must go now and see Mama,” said Winifred, “and see 
Dadda before he goes to sleep.” 

She bade them both good-night. 

Gudrun also rose to take her leave. 

“You needn’t go yet, need you?” said Gerald, glancing 
quickly at the clock. “It is early yet. I'll walk down with 
you when you go. Sit down, don’t hurry away.” 

Gudrun sat down, as if, absent as he was, his will had power 
over her. She felt almost mesmerised. He was strange to her, 
something unknown. What was he thinking, what was he 
feeling, as he stood there so rapt, saying nothing? He kept 


? ee a 


a ee —— ee ae, el 


DEATH AND LOVE 371 


her—she could feel that. He would not let her go. She 
watched him in humble submissiveness. 

“Had the doctor anything new to tell you?” she asked, 
softly, at length, with that gentle, timid sympathy which 
touched a keen fibre in his heart. He lifted his eyebrows with 
a negligent, indifferent expression. 

‘“No—nothing new,” he replied, as if the question were 
quite casual, trivial. “He says the pulse is very weak indeed, 
very intermittent—but that doesn’t necessarily mean much, 
you know.” 

He looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and soft and 
unfolded, with a stricken look that roused him. 

“No,” she murmured at length. “I don’t understand any- 
thing about these things.” 

“Just as well not,” he said. “I say, won’t you have a cig- 
arette?p—do! He quickly fetched the box, and held her a 
light. Then he stood before her on the hearth again. 

“No,” he said, ‘“‘we’ve never had much illness in the house, 
either—not till father.” He seemed to meditate a while. Then 
looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, 
that filled her with dread, he continued: “It’s something you 
don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And then you 
realise that it was there all the time—it was always there— 
you understand what I mean?—the possibility of this in- 
curable illness, this slow death.” 

He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put 
his cigarette to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling. 

“IT know,” murmured Gudrun, “it is dreadful.” 

He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette 
from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue 
between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly 
aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in thought. 

“TI don’t know what the effect actually is, on one,” he said, 


and again he looked down at her.. Her eyes were dark and 


stricken with knowledge, looking into his. He saw her sub- 
merged, and he turned aside his face. “But I alsolutely am not 
the same. There’s nothing left, if you understand what I 
mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the 


372 WOMEN IN LOVE 


same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know 
what to do.” 

“No,” she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, 
heavy, almost pleasure, almost pain. ‘What can be done?” 
she added. 

He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the 
great marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without 
fender or bar. 

“T don’t know, I’m sure,” he replied. “But I do think you’ve 
got to find some way of resolving the situation—not because 
you want to, but because you’ve got to, otherwise you’re done, 
The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the 
point of caving in, and you are just holding it up with your 
hands. Well, it’s a situation that obviously can’t continue. 
You can’t stand holding the roof up with your hands, for ever. 
You know that sooner or later you'll have to let go. Do you 
understand what I mean? And so something’s got to be done, 
or there’s a universal collapse—as far as you yourself are con- 
cerned.” , 

He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under 
his heel. He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the 
beautiful old marble panels of the fireplace, swelling softly 
carved, round him and above him. She felt as if she were 
caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some horrible and fatal 
trap. 

“But what can be done?” she murmured humbly. “You 
must use me if I can be of any help at all—but how can I? 
I don’t see how I can help you.” 

He looked down at her critically. 

“T don’t want you to help,” he said, slightly irritated, “be- 
cause there’s nothing to be done. I only want sympathy, do 
you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That 
eases the strain. And there is nobody to talk to sympathet- 
ically. That’s the curious thing. There is nobody. There’s 
Rupert Birkin. But then he isn’t sympathetic, he wants to 
dictate, And that is no use whatsoever.” 

She was caught in a strange snare. She looked down at her 
hands. | 


Se eee 


DEATH AND LOVE © 373 


Then there was the sound of the door softly opening. Ger- 
ald started. He was chagrined. It was his starting that really 
startled Gudrun. Then he went forward, with quick, grace- 
ful, intentional courtesy. 

“Oh, mother!” he said. “How nice of you to come down. 
How are you?” 

The elderly woman, loosely and bulkily wrapped in a purple 
gown, came forward silently, slightly hulked, as usual. Her 
son was at her side. He pushed her up a chair, saying “You 
know Miss Brangwen, don’t you?” 

The mother glanced at Gudrun indifferently. 

“Yes,” she said. Then she turned her wonderful, forget- 
me-not blue eyes up to her son, as she slowly sat down in the 
chair he had brought her. 

“I came to ask you about your father,” she said, in her 
rapid, scarcely-audible voice. “I didn’t know you had com- 
pany.” 

“No? Didn’t Winifred tell you? Miss Brangwen stayed to 
dinner, to make us a little more lively—” 

Mrs. Crich turned slowly round to Gudrun, and looked at 
her, but with unseeing eyes. | 

“T’m afraid it would be no treat to her.” Then she turned 
again to her son. “Winifred tells me the doctor had some- 
thing to say about your father. What is it?” 

“Only that the pulse is very weak—misses altogether a good 
many times—so that he might not last the night out,” Gerald 
replied. 

Mrs. Crich sat perfectly impassive, as if she had not heard.’ 
Her bulk seemed hunched in the chair, her fair hair hung slack 
over her ears. But her skin was clear and fine, her hands, as 
she sat with them forgotten and folded, were quite beautiful, 
full of potential energy. A great mass of energy seemed de- 
caying up in that silent, hulking form. 

She looked up at her son, as he stood, keen and soldierly, 
near to her. Her eyes were most wonderfully blue, bluer than 
forget-me-nots. She seemed to have a certain confidence in 
Gerald, and to feel a certain motherly mistrust of him. 

“How are you?” she muttered, in her strangely quiet voice, 


374 WOMEN IN LOVE 


as if nobody should hear but him. “You're not getting into a 
state, are you? You're not:letting it make you hysterical?” 

The curious’ challenge in the last words startled Gudrun. 

“T don’t think so, mother,” he answered, rather coldly cheery. 
“Somebody’s got to see it through, you know.” ; 

“Have they? Have they?” answered his mother rapidly. 
“Why should you take it on yourself? What have you got to 
do, seeing it through. It will see itself through. You are not 
needed.” 

“No, I don’t suppose I can do any good,” he answered. 
“It’s just how it affects us, you see.” 

“You like to be affected—don’t you? It’s quite nuts for 
you? You would have to be important. You have no need 
to stop at home. Why don’t you go away!” 

These sentences, evidently the ripened grain of many dark 
hours, took Gerald by surprise. 

“T don’t think it’s any good going away now, mother, at 
the last minute,” he said, coldly. | 

“Vou take care,” replied his mother. “You mind yourself— 
that’s your business. You take too much on yourself. You 
mind yourself, or you'll find yourself in Queer Street, that’s 
what will happen to you. You’re hysterical, always were.” 

“T’m all right, mother,” he said. ‘“There’s no need to worry 
about me, I assure you.” 

“Let the dead bury their dead—don’t go and bury yourself 
along with them—that’s what I tell you. I know you well 
enough.” 

He did not answer this, not knowing what to say. The 
mother sat bunched up in silence, her beautiful white hands, 
that had no rings whatsoever, clasping the pommels of her 
arm-chair. 

“You can’t do it,” she said, almost bitterly. “You haven’t 
the nerve. You’re as weak as a cat, really—always were. Is 
this young woman staying here?” 

“No,” said Gerald. ‘She is going home to-night.” 

“Then she’d better have the dog-cart. Does she go far?” 

“Only to Beldover.” 


DEATH AND LOVE 375 


“Ah!” The elderly woman never looked at Gudrun, yet she 
seemed to take knowledge of her presence. 

“You are inclined to take too much on yourself, Gerald,” 
said the mother, pulling herself to her feet, with a little 
difficulty. 

“Will you go, mother?” he asked, politely. 

“Ves, I’ll go up again,” she replied. Turning to Gudrun, she 
bade her “Good-night.” Then she went slowly to the door, as 
if she were unaccustomed to walking. At the door she lifted 
her face to him, implicitly. He kissed her. 

“Don’t come any further with me,’ she said, in her barely 
audible voice. “I don’t want you any further.” 

He bade her good-night, watched her across to the stairs 
and mount slowly. Then he closed the door and came back 
to Gudrun. Gudrun rose also, to go. 

“A queer being, my mother,” he said. 

“Yes,” replied Gudrun. 

“She has her own thoughts.” 

“Yes,” said Gudrun. 

Then they were silent. 

“You want to go?” he asked. ‘Half a minute, Ill just have 
a horse put in—” 

“No,” said Gudrun. “I want to walk.” 

He had promised to walk with her down the long, lonely 
mile of drive, and she wanted this. 

“You might just as well drive,” he said. 

“T’d much rather walk,” she asserted, with emphasis. 

“You would! Then I will come along with you. You know 
where your things are? I'll put boots on.’ 

He put on a cap, and an overcoat over hi evening dress. 
They went out into the night. 

“Let us light a cigarette,” he said, stopping in a sheltered 
angle of the porch. “You have one too.” 

So, with the scent of tobacco on the night air, they set off 
down the dark drive that ran between close-cut hedges through 
sloping meadows. 

He wanted to put his arm round her. If he could put his 
arm round her, and draw her against him as they walked, he 


376 WOMEN IN LOVE 


would equilibriate himself. For now he felt like a pair of 
scales, the half of which tips down and down into an indefinite 
void. He must recover some sort of balance. And here was 
the hope and the perfect recovery. 

Blind to her, thinking only of himself, he slipped his arm 
softly round her waist, and drew her to him. Her heart 
fainted, feeling herself taken. But then, his arm was so strong, 
she quailed under its powerful close grasp. She died a little 
death, and was drawn against him as they walked down the 
stormy darkness. He seemed to balance her perfectly in op- 
position to himself, in their dual motion of walking. So, sud- 
denly, he was liberated and perfect, strong, heroic. 

He put his hand to his mouth and threw his cigarette away, 
a gleaming point, into the unseen hedge. Then he was quite 
free to balance her. 

“That’s better,” he said, with exultancy. 

The exultation in his voice was like a sweetish, poisonous 
drug to her. Did she then mean so much to him! She sipped 
the poison. ~~ 

“Are you happier?” she asked, wistfully. 

“Much better,” he said, in the same exultant voice, “and I 
was rather far gone.” 

She nestled against him. He felt her all soft and warm, 
she was the rich, lovely substance of his being. The warmth 
and motion of her walk suffused through him wonderfully. 

“I’m so glad if I help you,” she said. 

“Yes,” he answered. “There’s nobody else could do it, if 
you wouldn’t.” 

“That is true,” she said to herself, with a thrill of strange, 
fatal elation. 

As they walked, he seemed to lift her nearer and nearer to 
himself, till she moved upon the firm vehicle of his body. He 
was so strong, so sustaining, and he could not be opposed. She 
drifted along in a wonderful interfusion of physical motion, 
down the dark, blowy hillside. Far across shone the little 
yellow lights of Beldover, many of them, spread in a thick 
patch on another dark hill. But he and she were walking in 
perfect, isolated darkness, outside the world. 


DEATH AND LOVE 377 


“But how much do you care for me!” came her voice, almost 
querulous. ‘You see, I don’t know, I don’t understand!” 

“How much!” His voice rang with a painful elation. 
“T don’t know either—but everything.” He was startled by 
his own declaration. It was true. So he stripped himself of 
every safeguard, in making this admission to her. He cared 
everything for her—she was everything. 

“But I can’t believe it,” said her low voice, amazed, trem- 
bling. She was trembling with doubt and exultance. ‘This 
was the thing she wanted to hear, only this. Yet now she 
heard it, heard the strange clapping vibration of truth in his 
voice as he said it, she could not believe. She could not be- 
lieve—she did not belive. Yet she believed, triumphantly, 
with fatal exultance. | 

“Why not?” he said. “Why don’t you believe it? It’s true. 
It is true, as we stand at this moment—” he stood still with 
her in the wind. “I care for nothing on earth, or in heaven, 
outside this spot where we are. And it isn’t my own presence 
I care about, it is all yours. I’d sell my soul a hundred times 
—but I couldn’t bear not to have you here. I couldn’t bear 
to be alone. My brain would burst. It is true.” He drew 
her closer to- him, with definite movement. 

“No,” she murmured, afraid. Yet this was what she wanted. 
Why did she so lose courage? 

They resumed their strange walk. They were such strangers 
—and yet they were so frightfully, unthinkably near. It was 
like a madness. Yet it was what she wanted, it was what she 
wanted. They had descended the hill, and now they were com- 
ing to the square arch where the road passed under the col- 
tery railway. The arch, Gudrun knew, had walls of squared 
stone, mossy on one side with water that trickled down, dry 
on the other side. She had stood under it to hear the train 
rumble thundering over the logs overhead. And she knew that 
under this dark and lonely bridge the young colliers stood in 
the darkness with their sweethearts, in rainy weather. And 
so she wanted ta stand under the bridge with her sweetheart, 
and be kissed under the bridge in the invisible darkness. Her 
steps dragged as she drew near. 


378 WOMEN IN LOVE 


So, under the bridge, they came to a standstill, and he lifted 
her upon his breast. His body vibrated taut and powerful as 
he closed upon her and crushed her, breathless and dazed and 
destroyed, crushed her upon his breast. Ah, it was terrible, 
and perfect. Under this bridge, the colliers pressed their lov- 
ers to their breast. And now, under the bridge, the master 
of them all pressed her to himself! And how much more 
powerful and terrible was his embrace than theirs, how much 
more concentrated and supreme his love was, than theirs in 
the same sort! She felt she would swoon, die, under the 
vibrating, inhuman tension of his arms and his body—she 
would pass away. Then the unthinkable high vibration slack- 
ened and became more undulating; he slackened and drew her 
with him to stand with his back to the wall. 

She was almost unconscious. So the colliers’ lovers would 
stand with their backs to the walls, holding their sweethearts 
and kissing them as she was being kissed. Ah, but would their 
kisses be fine and powerful as the kisses of the firm-mouthed 
master? Even the keen, short-cut moustache—the colliers 
would not have that. 

And the colliers’ sweethearts would, like herself, hang their 
heads back limp over their shoulder, and look out from the 
dark archway, at the close patch of yellow lights on the unseen 
hill in the distance, or at the vague form of trees, and at the 
buildings of the colliery wood-yard, in the other direction. 

His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering 
her into himself, her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, 
drinking in the suffusion of her physical being, avidly. He 
lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like wine into 
a cup. 

“This is worth everything,” he said, in a strange, pene- 
trating voice. 

So she relaxed, and seemed to melt, to flow into him, as 
if she were some infinitely warm and precious sufiusion filling 
into his veins, like an intoxicant. Her arms were round his 
neck, he kissed her and held her perfectly suspended, she was 
all slack and flowing into him, and he was the firm, strong 
cup that receives the wine of her life. So she lay cast upon 


DEATH AND LOVE 379 


him, stranded, lifted up against him, melting and melting un- 
der his kisses, melting into his limbs and bones, as if he were 
soft iron becoming surcharged with her electric life. 

Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she 
passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, 
and she lay still, becoming contained by him, sleeping in 
him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. So she was 
passed away and gone in him, and he was perfected. 

When she opened her eyes again, and saw the patch of lights 
in the distance, it seemed to her strange that the world still 
existed, that she was standing under the bridge resting her 
head on Gerald’s breast. Gerald—who was he? He was the 
exquisite adventure, the desirable unknown to her. 

She looked up, and in the darkness saw his face above her, 
his shapely, male face. ‘There seemed a faint, white light 
emitted from him, a white aura, as if he were visitor from the 
unseen. She reached up, like Eve reaching to the apples on 
the tree of knowledge, and she kissed him, though her passion 
was a transcendent fear of the thing he was, touching his face 
with her infinitely delicate, encroaching wondering fingers. Her 
fingers went over the mould of his face, over his features. How 
perfect and foreign he was—ah how dangerous! Her soul 
thrilled with complete knowledge. This was the glistening, 
forbidden apple, this face of a man. She kissed him, putting 
her fingers over his face, his eyes, his nostrils, over his brows 
and his ears, to his neck, to know him, to gather him in by 
touch. He was so firm, and shapely, with such satisfying, 
inconceivable shapeliness, strange, yet unutterably clear. He 
was such an unutterable enemy, yet glistening with uncanny 
white fire. She wanted to touch him and touch him and touch 
him, till she had him all in her hands, till she had strained 
him into her knowledge. Ah, if she could have the precious 
knowledge of him, she would be filled, and nothing could de- 
prive her of this. For he was so unsure, so risky in the com- 
mon world of day. 

“You are so beautiful,” she murmured in her throat. 

He wondered, and was suspended. But she felt him quiver, 
and she came down involuntarily nearer upon him. He could 


380 WOMEN IN LOVE 


not help himself. Her fingers had him under their power. The 
fathomless, fathomless desire they could evoke in him was 
deeper than death, where he had no choice. 

But she knew now, and it was enough. For the time, her 
soul was destroyed with the exquisite shock of his invisible 
fluid lightning. She knew. And this knowledge was a death 
from which she must recover. How much more of him was 
there to know? Ah much, much, many days harvesting for her 
large, yet perfectly subtle and intelligent hands upon the field 
of his living, radio-active body. Ah, her hands were eager, 
greedy for knowledge. But for the present it was enough, 
enough, as much as her soul could bear. Too much, and she 
would shatter herself, she would fill the fine vial of her soul 
too quickly, and it would break. Enough now—enough for the 
time being. There were all the after days when her hands, 
like birds, could feed upon the fields of his mystical plastic 
form—till then enough. 

And even he was glad to be checked, rebuked, held back. 
For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end 
was dreaded as deeply as it was desired. 

They walked on towards the town, towards where the lamps 
threaded singly, at long intervals down the dark high-road of 
the valley. They came at length to the gate of the drive. 

“Don’t come any further,” she said. 

“You’d rather I didn’t?” he asked, relieved. He did not 
want to go up the public streets with her, his — all naked 
and alight as it was. 

“Much rather—good-night.” She held out bie hand. He 
grasped it, then touched the perilous, potent fingers with his 
lips. 

“Good-night,” he said. “To-morrow.” 

And they parted. He went home full of the strength and 
the power of living desire. 

But the next day, she did not come, she sent a note that 
she was kept indoors by a cold. Here was a torment! But 
he possessed his soul in some sort of patience, writing a brief 
answer, telling her how sorry he was not to see her. 

The day after this, he stayed at home—it seemed so futile 


DEATH AND LOVE 381 


to go down to the office. His father could not live the week 
out. And he wanted to be at home, suspended. 

Gerald sat on a chair by the window in his father’s room. 
The landscape outside was black and winter-sodden. His 
father lay grey and ashen on the bed, a nurse moved silently 
in her white dress, neat and elegant, even beautiful. There 
was a scent of eau-de-cologne in the room. The nurse went 
out of the room, Gerald was alone with death, facing the 
-winter-black landscape. | 

“Ts there much more water in Denley?” came the faint 
voice, determined and querulous, from the bed. The dying 
man was asking about a leakage from Willey Water into one 
of the pits. 

“Some more—we shall have to run off the lake,” said 
Gerald. 

“Will you?” The faint voice filtered to extinction. There 
was dead stillness. The grey-faced, sick man lay with eyes 
closed, more dead than death. Gerald looked away. He felt 
his heart was seared, it would perish if this went on much 
longer. | 

Suddenly he heard a strange noise. Turning round, he saw 
his father’s eyes wide open, strained and rolling in a frenzy 
of inhuman struggling. Gerald started to his feet, and stood 
transfixed in horror. 

“Wha-a-ah-h-h-” came a horrible choking rattle from his 
father’s throat, the fearful, frenzied eye, rolling awfully in its 
wild fruitless search for help, passed blindly over Gerald, then 
up came the dark blood and mess pumping over the face of 
the agonised being, the tense body relaxed, the head fell aside, 
down the pillow. 

Gerald stood transfixed, his soul echoing in horror. He 
would move, but he could not. He could not move his limbs. 
His brain seemed to re-echo, like a pulse. 

The nurse in white softly entered. She glanced at Gerald, 
then at the bed. 

“Ah!” came her soft whimpering cry, and she hurried for- 
ward to the dead man. “Ah-h!” came the slight sound of her 
agitated distress, as she stood bending over the bedside. Then 


382 WOMEN IN LOVE 


she recovered, turned, and came for towel and sponge. She 
was wiping the dead face carefully, and murmuring, almost 
whimpering, very softly: “Poor Mr. Crich!—Poor Mr. Crich! 
—Oh, poor Mr. Crich!” 

“Is he dead?” clanged Gerald’s sharp voice. 

“Oh yes, he’s gone,” replied the soft, moaning voice of the 
nurse, as she looked up at Gerald’s face. She was young and 
beautiful and quivering. A strange sort of grin went over 
Gerald’s face, over the horror. And he walked out of the room. 

He was going to tell his mother. On the landing he met 
his brother Basil. | 

“He’s gone, Basil,” he said, scarcely able to subdue his 
voice, not to let an unconscious, frightening exultation sound 
through. 

“What?” cried Basil, going pale. 

Gerald nodded. Then he went on to his mother’s room. 

She was sitting in her purple gown, sewing, very slowly 
sewing, putting in a stitch, then another stitch. She looked 
up at Gerald with her blue, undaunted eyes. ; 

“Father’s gone,” he said. 

“He’s dead? Who says so?” 

“Oh, you know, mother, if you see him.” 

She put her sewing down, and slowly rose. 

“Are you going to see him?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she said. 

By the bedside the children already stood in a weeping 
group. 

“Oh, mother!” cried the daughters, almost in hysterics, 
weeping loudly. 

But the mother went forward. The dead man lay in repose, 
as if gently asleep, so gently, so peacefully, like a young man 
sleeping in purity. He was still warm. She stood looking at 
him in gloomy, heavy silence, for some time. 

“Ay,” she said bitterly, at length, speaking as if to the 
unseen witnesses of the air. ‘“You’re dead.” She stood for 
some minutes in silence, looking down. “Beautiful,” she as- 
serted, “beautiful as if life had never touched you—never 
touched you. God send I look different. I hope I shall look 


DEATH AND LOVE 383 


my years, when I am dead. Beautiful, beautiful,” she crooned 
over him. ‘You can see him in his teens, with his first beard 
on his face. A beautiful soul, beautiful—” Then there was 
a tearing in her voice as she cried: “None of you look like 
this, when you are dead! Don’t let it happen again.” It was 
a strange, wild command from out of the unknown. Her chil- 
dren moved unconsciously together, in a nearer group, at the 
dreadful command in her voice. The colour was flushed bright 
in her cheek, she looked awful and wonderful. ‘Blame me, 
blame me if you like, that he lies there like a lad in his teens, 
with his first beard on his face. Blame me if you like. But you 
none of you know.’’ She was silent in intense silence. Then 
there came, in a low, tense voice: “If I thought that the chil- 
dren I bore would lie looking like that in death, I’d strangle 
them when they were infants, yes—” 

“No, mother,” came the strange, clarion voice of Gerald 
from the background, “we are different, we don’t blame you.” 

She turned and looked full in his eyes. Then she lifted her 
hands in a strange half-gesture of mad despair. | 

“Pray!” she said strongly. ‘Pray for yourselves to God, 
for there’s no help for you from your parents.” 

“Oh mother!” cried her daughters wildly. 

But she had turned and gone,.and they all went quickly 
away from each other. 

When Gudrun heard that Mr. Crich was dead, she felt re- 
buked. She had stayed away lest Gerald should think her too 
easy of winning. And now, he was in the midst of trouble, 
whilst she was cold. 

The following day she went up as usual to Winifred, who 
was glad to see her, glad to get away into the studio. The girl 
had wept, and then, too frightened, had turned aside to avoid 
any more tragic eventuality. She and Gudrun resumed work 
as usual, in the isolation of the studio, and this seemed an 
immeasurable happiness, a pure world of freedom, after the 
aimlessness and misery of the house. Gudrun stayed on till 
evening. She and Winifred had dinner brought up to the 
studio, where they ate in freedom, away from all the people 
in the house. 


384 WOMEN IN LOVE 


After dinner Gerald came up. The great high studio was 
full of shadow and a fragrance of coffee. Gudrun and Wini- 
fred had a little table near the fire at the far end, with a white 
lamp whose light did not travel far. They were a tiny world 
to themselves, the two girls surrounded by tuvely shadows, the 
beams and rafters shadowy overhead, the benches and imple- 
ments shadowy down the studio. 

“You are cosy enough here,” said Gerald, going up to them. 

There was a low brick fireplace, full of fire, an old blue 
Turkish rug, the little oak table with the lamp and the white- 
and-blue cloth and the dessert, and Gudrun making coffee in an 
odd brass coffee-maker, and Winifred scalding a little milk in 
a tiny saucepan. 

“Have you had coffee?” said Gudrun. 

“T have, but I’ll have some more with you,” he replied. 

“Then you must have it in a glass—there are only two 
cups,” said Winifred. 

“Tt is the same to me,” he said, taking a nie and coming 
into the charmed circle of the girls. How happy they were, 
how cosy and glamorous it was with them, in a world of lofty 
shadows! The outside world, in which he had been trans- 
acting funeral business all the day was completely wiped out. 
In an instant he snuffed glamour and magic. 

They had all their things ‘very dainty, two odd and lovely 
little cups, scarlet and solid gilt, and a little black jug with 
scarlet discs, and the curious coffee-machine, whose spirit- 
flame flowed steadily, almost invisibly. There was the effect 
of rather sinister richness, in which Gerald at once escaped 
himself. 

They all sat down, and Gudrun carefully poured out the 
coffee. 

“Will you have milk?” she asked calmly, yet nervously pois- 
ing the little black jug with its big red dots. She was always 
so completely controlled, yet so bitterly nervous. 

“No, I won’t,” he replied. 

So, with a curious humility, she placed him the little cup 
of coffee, and herself took the awkward tumbler. She seemed 
to want to serve him. 


DEATH AND LOVE 385 


“Why don’t you give me the glass—it is so clumsy for you,” 
he said. He would much rather have had it, and seen her 
daintily served. But she was silent, pleased with the dis- 
parity, with her self-abasement. 

“You are quite en ménage,” he said. 

“Yes. We aren’t really at home to visitors,” said Winifred. 

“You’re not? Then I’m an intruder?” 

For once he felt his conventional dress was out of place, he 
was an outsider. 

Gudrun was very quiet. She did not feel drawn to talk to 
him. At this stage, silence was best—or mere light words. 
It was best to leave serious things aside. So they talked gaily 
and lightly, till they heard the man below lead out the horse, 
and call it to “back-back!” into the dog-cart that was to take 
Gudrun home. So she put on her things, and shook hands 
with Gerald, without once meeting his eyes. And she was 
gone. 

The funeral was detestable. Afterwards, at the tea-table,. 
the daughters kept saying—‘‘He was a good father to us—the 
best father in the world”—or else—‘‘We shan’t easily find 
another man as good as father was.” 

Gerald acquiesced in all this. It was the right conventional 
attitude, and, as far as the world went, he believed in the con- 
ventions. He took it as a matter of course. But Winifred 
hated everything, and hid in the studio, and cried her heart. 
out, and wished Gudrun would come. 

Luckily everybody was going away. ‘The Criches never 
stayed long at home. By dinner-time, Gerald was left quite 
alone. Even Winifred was carried off to London, for a few 
days with her sister Laura. 

But when Gerald was really left alone, he could not bear 
it. One day passed by, and another. And all the time he was 
like a man hung in chains over the edge of an abyss. Struggle 
as he might, he could not turn himself to the solid earth, he 
could not get footing. He was suspended on the edge of a 
void, writhing. Whatever he thought of, was the abyss— 
whether it were friends or strangers, or work or play, it all 
showed him only the same bottomless void, in which his heart 
swung perishing. There was no escape, there was nothing to 


386 WOMEN IN LOVE 


grasp hold of. He must writhe on the edge of the chasm, sus- 
pended in chains of invisible physical life. 

At first he was quiet, he kept still, expecting the extremity 
to pass away, expecting to find himself released into the world 
of the living, after this extremity of penance. But it did not 
pass, and a crisis gained upon him. 

As the evening of the third day came on, his heart rang with 
fear. He could not bear another night. Another night was 
coming on, for another night he was to be suspended in chain 
of physical life, over the bottomless pit of nothingness. And 
he could not bear it. He could not bear it. He was fright- 
ened deeply, and coldly, frightened in his soul. He did not 
believe in his own strength any more. He could not fall into 
this infinite void, and rise again. If he fell, he would be gone 
for ever. He must withdraw, he must seek reinforcements. — 
He did not believe in his own single self, any further than this. 

After dinner, faced with the ultimate experience of his own 
nothingness, he turned aside. He pulled on his boots, put on 
his coat, and set out to walk in the night. 

It was dark and misty. He went through the wood, stum- 
bling and feeling his way to the Mill. Birkin was away. 
Good—he was half glad. He turned up the hill, and stumbled 
blindly over the wild slopes, having lost the path in the com- 
plete darkness. It was boring.” Where was he going? No 
matter. He stumbled on till he came to a path again. Then 
he went on through another wood. His mind became dark, he 
went on automatically. Without thought or sensation, he 
stumbled unevenly on, out into the open again, fumbling for 
stiles, losing the path, and going along the hedges of the fields 
till he came to the outlet. 

And at last he came to high road. It had distracted him 
to struggle blindly through the maze of darkness. But now, 
he must take a direction. And he did not even know where 
he was. But he must take a direction now. Nothing would be 
resolved by merely walking, walking away. He had to take a 
direction. 

He stood still on the road, that was high in the utterly dark 
night, and he did not know where he was. It was a strange 


DEATH AND LOVE 387 


sensation, his heart beating, and ringed round with the utterly 
unknown darkness. So he stood for some time. 

Then he heard footsteps, and saw a small, swinging light. 
He immediately went towards this. It was a miner. 

“Can you tell me,” he said, “where this road goes?” 

“Road? Ay, it goes ter Whatmore.” 

“Whatmore! Oh thank you, that’s right. I thought I was 
wrong. Good-night.” 

“Good-night,” replied the broad voice of the miner. 

_ Gerald guessed where he was. At least, when he came to 
Whatmore, he would know. He was glad to be on a high 
road. He walked forward as in a sleep of decision. 

That was Whatmore village—? Yes, the King’s Head—and 
there the hall gates. He descended the steep hill almost run- 
ning. Winding through the hollow, he passed the Grammar 
School, and came to Willey Green Church. The churchyard! 
He halted. 

Then in another moment he had clambered up the wall and 
was going among the graves. Even in this darkness he could 
see the heaped pallor of old white flowers at his feet. This 
then was the grave. He stooped down. The flowers were cold 
and clammy. There was a raw scent of chrysanthemums and 
tube-roses, deadened. He felt the clay beneath, and shrank, 
it was so horribly cold and sticky. He stood away in revulsion. 

Here was one centre then, here in the complete darkness be- 
side the unseen, raw grave. But there was nothing for him 
here. No, he had nothing to stay here for. He felt as if some 
of the clay were sticking cold and unclean, on his heart. No, 
enough of this. 

Where then?—home? Never! It was no use going there. 
That was less than no use. It could not be done. There was 
somewhere else to go. Where? 

A dangerous resolve formed in his heart, like a fixed idea. 
There was Gudrun—she would be safe in her home. But he 
could get at her—he would get at her. He would not go back 
to-night till he had come to her, if it cost him his life. He 
staked his all on this throw. 

He set off walking straight across the fields towards Bel- 


388 WOMEN IN LOVE 


dover. It was so dark, nobody could ever see him. His feet 
were wet and cold, heavy with clay. But he went on per- 
sistently, like a wind, straight forward, as if to his fate. There 
were great gaps in his consciousness. He was conscious that 
he was at Winthorpe hamlet, but quite unconscious how he 
had got there. And, as in a dream, he was in the long 
street of Beldover, with its street-lamps. 

There was a noise of voices, and of a door shutting loudly, 
and being barred, and of men talking in the night. The 
“Lord Nelson” had just closed, and the drinkers were going 
home. He had better ask one of these where she lived—for 
he did not know the side streets at all. 

“Can you tell me where Somerset Drive is?” he asked of one 
of the uneven men. 

“Where what?” replied the tipsy miner’s voice. 

“Somerset Drive.” 

“Somerset Drive!—I’ve heard o’ such a place, but I couldn’t 
for my life say where it is. Who might you be dippers if 

“Mr Brangwen—William Brangwen.” 

“William Brangwen—?—?” 

“Who teaches at the Grammar School, at Willey Green— 
his daughter teaches there too.” 

“Q-o-o-oh, Brangwen! Now I’ve got you. Of course, Wil- 
liam Brangwen! Yes, yes, he’s got two lassies as teachers, 
aside hisself. Ay, that’s him—that’s him! Why certainly I 
know where he lives, back your life I do! Yi—wkat place do 
they ca’ it?” 

“Somerset Drive,” repeated Gerald patiently. He knew his 
own colliers fairly well. 

“Somerset Drive, for certain!” said the collier, swinging his 
arm as if catching something up. “Somerset Drive—yi! I 
couldn’t for my life lay hold o’ the lercality o’ the place. Yis, 
I know the place, to be sure I do—” 

He turned unsteadily on his feet, and pointed up the dark, 
nigh-deserted road. 

“You go up theer—an’ you ta’e th’ first—yi, th’ first turnin’ 
on your left—o’ that side—past Withamses tuffy shop—” 

“T know,” said Gerald. 


ee Se 


DEATH AND LOVE 389 


“Ay! You go down a bit, past wheer th’ water-man lives— 
and then Somerset Drive, as they ca’ it, branches off on ’t 
right hand side—an’ there’s nowt but three houses in it, no 
more than three, I believe—an’ I’m a’most certain as theirs is 
th’ last—th’ last o’ th’ three—you see—” 

“Thank you very much,” said Gerald. “Good-night.” 

And he started off, leaving the tipsy man there standing 
rooted. 

Gerald went past the dark shops and houses, most of them 
sleeping now, and twisted round to the little blind road that 
ended on a field of darkness. He slowed down, as he neared 
his goal, not knowing how he should proceed. What if the 
house were closed in darkness? 

But it was not. He saw a big lighted window, and heard 
voices, then a gate banged. His quick ears caught the sound 
of Birkin’s voice, his keen eyes made out Birkin, with Ursula 
standing in a pale dress on the step of the garden path. Then 
Ursula stepped down, and came along the road, holding Birkin’s 
arm. 

Gerald went across into the darkness and they dawdled past 
him, talking happily, Birkin’s voice low, Ursula’s high and 
distinct. Gerald went quickly to the house. 

The blinds were drawn before the big, lighted’ window of 
the dining room. Looking up the path at the side he could 
see the door left open, shedding a soft, coloured light from the 
hall lamp. He went quickly and silently up the path, and 
looked up into the hall. There were pictures on the walls, 
and the antlers of a stag—and the stairs going up on one side 
—and just near the foot of the stairs the half opened door of 
the dining-room. | 

With heart drawn fine, Gerald stepped into the hall, whose 
floor was of coloured tiles, went quickly and looked into the 
large, pleasant room. In a chair by the fire, the father sat 
asleep, his head tilted back against the side of the big oak 
chimney piece, his ruddy face seen fore-shortened, the nostrils 


_ open, the mouth fallen a little. It would take the merest sound 


to wake him. 
Gerald stood a second suspended. He glanced down the 


390 WOMEN IN LOVE 


passage behind him. It was all dark. Again he was sus- 
pended. Then he went swiftly upstairs. His senses were so 
finely, almost supernaturally keen, that he seemed to cast his 
own will over the half-unconscious house. 

He came to the first landing. There he stood, scarcely 
breathing. Again, corresponding to the door below, there 
was a door again. That would be the mother’s room. He 
could hear her moving about in the candle-light. She would 
be expecting her husband to come up. He looked along the 
dark landing. 

Then, silently, on infinitely careful feet, he, went along the 
passage, feeling the wall with the extreme tips of his fingers. 
There was a door. He stood and listened. He could hear two 
people’s breathing. It was not that. He went stealthily for- 
ward. There was another door, slightly open. The room was 
in darkness. Empty. Then there was the bathroom, he could 
smell the soap and the heat. Then at the end another bed- 
room—one soft breathing. This was she. 

With an almost occult carefulness he turned the door handle, 
and opened the door an inch. It creaked slightly. Then he 
opened it another inch—then another. His heart did not beat, 
he seemed to create a silence about himself, an obliviousness. 

He was in the room. Still the sleeper breathed softly. It 
was very dark. He felt his way forward inch by inch, with 
his feet and hands. He touched the bed, he could hear the 
sleeper. He drew nearer, bending close as if his eyes would 
disclose whatever there was. And then, very near to his face, 
to his fear, he saw the round, dark head of a boy. 

He recovered, turned round, saw the door afar, a faint light 
revealed. And he retreated swiftly, drew the door to without 
fastening it, and passed rapidly down the passage. At the 
head of the stairs he hesitated. There was still time to flee. 

But it was unthinkable. He would maintain his will. He 
turned past the door of the parental bedroom like a shadow, 
and was climbing the second flight of stairs. They creaked 
under his weight—it was exasperating. Ah what disaster, if 
the mother’s door opened just beneath him, and she saw him! 
It would have to be, if it were so. He held the control still. 


DEATH AND LOVE 391 


He was not quite up these stairs when he heard a quick run- 
ning of feet below, the outer door was closed and locked, he 
heard Ursula’s voice, then the father’s sleepy exclamation. 
He pressed on swiftly to the upper landing. 

Again a door was ajar, a room was empty. Feeling his 
way forward, with the tips of his fingers, travelling rapidly, 
like a blind man, anxious lest Ursula should come upstairs, he 
found another door. ‘There, with his preternaturally fine 
senses alert, he listened. He heard someone moving in bed. 
This would be she. 

Softly now, like one who has only one sense, the tactile 
sense, he turned the latch. It clicked. He held stili. The bed- 
clothes rustled. His heart did not beat. Then again he drew 
the latch back, and very gently pushed the door. It made a 
sticking noise as it gave. 

“Ursula?” said Gudrun’s voice, frightened. He quickly 
opened the door and pushed it behind him. 

“Ts it you, Ursula?” came Gudrun’s frightened voice. He 
heard her sitting up in bed. In another moment she would 
scream. | 

“No, it’s me,” he said, feeling his way towards her. “It is 
I, Gerald.” 

She sat motionless in her bed in sheer astonishment. -She 
was too astonished, too much taken by surprise, even to be 
afraid. 

“Gerald!”’ she echoed, in blank amazement. He had found 
his way to the bed, and his outstretched hand touched her 
warm breast blindly. She shrank away. 

“Let me make a light,” she said, springing out. 

He stood perfectly motionless. He heard her touch the 
match-box, he heard her fingers in their movement. Then he 
saw her in the light of a match, which she held to the candle. 
The light rose in the room, then sank to a small dimness, as 
the flame sank down on the candle, before it mounted again. 

She looked at him, as he stood near the other side of the 
bed. His cap was pulled low over his brow, his black over- 
coat was buttoned close up to his chin. His face was strange 
and luminous. He was inevitable as a supernatural being. 


392 ‘WOMEN IN LOVE 


When she had seen him, she knew. She knew there was some- 
thing fatal in the situation, and she must accept it. Yet she 
must challenge him. 

“Flow did you come up?” she asked. 

“T walked up the stairs—the door was open.” 

She looked at him. 

“T haven’t closed this door, either,” he said. She walked. 
swiftly across the room, and closed her door, softly, and locked 
it. Then she came hack. 

She was wonderful, with startled eyes and flushed cheeks, 
and her plait of hair rather short and thick down her back, 
and her long, fine white night-dress falling to her feet. 

She saw that his boots were all clayey, even his trousers 
were plastered with clay. And she wondered if he had made 
footprints all the way up. He was a very strange figure, stand- 
ing in her bedroom, near the tossed bed. 

“Why have you come?” she asked, almost querulous. 

“T wanted to,” he replied. 

And this she could see from his face. It was fate. 

“You are so muddy,” she said, in distaste, but gently. He 
looked down at his feet. 

“T was walking in the dark,” he replied. But he felt vividly 
elated. There was a pause. He stood on one side of the 
tumbled bed, she on the other. He did not even take his cap 
from his brows. 

“And what do you want of me?” she challenged. 

He looked aside, and did not answer. Save for the extreme 
beauty and mystic attractiveness of this distinct, strange face, 
she would have sent him away. But his face was too wonder- 
ful and undiscovered to her. It fascinated her with the fasct- 
nation of pure beauty, cast a spell on her, like nostalgia, an 
ache. 

“What do you want of me?” she repeated in an estranged 
voice. 

He pulled off his cap, in a movement of dream-liberation, 
and went across to her. But he could not touch her, because 
she stood barefoot in her night-dress, and he was muddy and 


DEATH AND LOVE 393 


damp. Her eyes, wide and large and wondering, watched him, 
and asked him the ultimate question. 

“T came—because I must,” he said. “Why do you ask?” 

She looked at him in doubt and wonder. 

“T must ask,” she said. 

He shook his head slightly. 

“There is no answer,” he replied, with strange vacancy. 

There was about him a curious, and almost godlike air of 
simplicity and naive directness. He reminded her of an ap- 
parition, the young Hermes. 

“But why did you come to me?” she persisted. 

“Because—it has to be so. If there weren’t you in the 
world, then J shouldn’t be in the world, either.” 

She stood looking at him, with large, wide, wondering, 
stricken eyes. His eyes were looking steadily into hers all the 
time, and he seemed fixed in an odd supernatural steadfastness. 
She sighed. She was lost now. She had no choice. 

“Won’t you take off your boots,” she said. “They must 
be wet.” 

He dropped his cap on a chair, unbuttoned his overcoat, 
lifting up his chin to unfasten the throat buttons. His short, 
keen hair was ruffled. He was so beautifully blond, like wheat. 
He pulled off his overcoat. — 

Quickly he pulled off his jacket, pulled loose his black tie, 
and was unfastening his studs, which were headed each with a 
pearl. She listened, watching, hoping no one would hear the 
starched linen crackle. It seemed to snap like pistol-shots. 

He had come for vindication. She let him hold her in his 
arms, clasp her close against him. He found in her an infinite 
relief. Into her he poured ali his pent-up darkness and cor- 
rosive death, and he was whole again. It was wonderful, mar- 
vellous, it was a miracle. This was the ever-recurrent miracle 
of his life, at the knowledge of which he was lost in an ecstasy 
of relief and wonder. And she, subject, received him as a 
vessel filled with his bitter potion of death. She had no power 
at this crisis to resist. The terrible frictional violence of death 
filled her, and she received it in an ecstasy of subjection, in 
throes of acute violent sensation. 


394 WOMEN IN LOVE 


As he drew nearer to her, he plunged deeper into her envelop- 
ing soft warmth, a wonderful creative heat that penetrated his 
veins and gave him life again. He felt himself dissolving and 
sinking to rest in the bath of her living strength. It seemed 
as if her heart in her breast were a second unconquerable sun, 
into the glow and creative strength of which he plunged further 
and further. All his veins, that were murdered and lacerated, 
healed softly as life came pulsing in, stealing: invisibly in to 
him as if it were the all-powerful effluence of the sun. His 
blood, which seemed to have been drawn back into death, came 
ebbing on the return, surely, beautifully, powerfully. 

He felt his limbs growing fuller and flexible with life, his 
body gained an unknown strength. He was a man again, 
strong and rounded. And he was a child, so soothed and re- 
stored and full of gratitude. 

And she, she was the great bath of life, he worshipped her. 
Mother and substance of all life she was. And he, child and 
man, received of her and was made whole. His pure body was 
almost killed. But the miraculous, soft effluence of her breast 
suffused over him, over his seared, damaged brain, like a heal- 
ing lymph, like a soft, soothing flow of life itself, perfect as if 
he were bathed in the womb again. 

His brain was hurt, seared, the tissue was as if destroyed. 
He had not known how hurt he was, how his tissue, the very 
tissue of his brain was damaged by the corrosive flood of 
death. Now, as the healing lymph of her effluence flowed 
through him, he knew how destroyed he was, like a plant whose 
tissue is burst from inwards by a frost. 

He buried his small, hard head between her breasts, and 
pressed her breasts against him with his hands. And she with 
quivering hands pressed his head against her, as he lay suf- 
fused out, and she lay fully conscious. The lovely creative 
warmth flooded through him like a sleep of fecundity within 
the womb. Ah, if only she would grant him the flow of this 
living effluence, he would be restored, he would be complete 
again. He was afraid she would deny him before it was 
finished. Like a ‘child at the breast, he cleaved intensely to 
her, and she could not put him away. He was infinitely grate- 


DEATH AND LOVE 395 


ful, as to God, or as an infant is at its mother’s breast. He was 
glad and grateful like a delirium, as he felt his own wholeness 
come over him again, as he felt the full, unutterable sleep com- 
ing over him, the sleep of complete exhaustion and restoration. 

But Gudrun lay wide awake, destroyed into perfect con- 
sciousness. She lay motionless, with wide eyes staring motion- 
less into the darkness, whilst he was sunk away in sleep, his 
arms round her. 

She seemed to be hearing waves break on a hidden shore, 
long, slow, gloomy waves, breaking with the rhythm of fate, 
so monotonously that it seemed eternal. This endless break- 
ing of slow, sullen waves of fate held her like a possession, 
whilst she lay with dark, wide eyes looking into the darkness. 
She could see so far, as far as eternity—yet she saw nothing. 
She was suspended in perfect consciousness—and of what was 
she conscious? 

This mood of extremity, when she lay staring into eternity, 
utterly suspended, and conscious of everything, to the last 
limits, passed and left her uneasy. She had lain so long motion- 
less. She moved, she became self-conscious. She wanted to 
look at him, to see him. 

But she dared not make a light, because she knew he would 
wake, and she did not want to break his perfect sleep, that she 
knew he had got of her. 

She disengaged herself, softly, and rose up a little to look at 
him. There was a faint light, it seemed to her, in the room. 
She could just distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect 
sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. 
But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek 
with torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. 
She seemed to look at him as at a pebble far away under clear 
dark water. And here was she, left with all the anguish of 
consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other element 
of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, 
far-off, and perfected. They would never be together. Ah, 
this awful, inhuman distance which would always be inter- 
posed between her and the other being! 

There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She 


396 WOMEN IN LOVE 


felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under- 
stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and 
immune ,in another world, whilst she was tormented with vio- 
lent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness. 

She lay in intense and vivid consciousness, an exhausting 
superconsciousness. The church clock struck the hours, it 
seemed to her, in quick succession. She heard them distinctly 
in the tension of her vivid consciousness. And he slept as if 
time were one moment, unchanging and unmoving. 

She was exhausted, wearied. Yet she must continue in this 
state of violent active super consciousness. She was conscious 
of everything—her childhood, her girlhood, all the forgotten 
incidents, all the unrealised influences and all the happenings 
she had not understood, pertaining to herself, to her family, 
to her friends, her lovers, her acquaintances, everybody. It 
was as if she drew a glittering rope of knowledge out of the 
sea of darkness, drew and drew and drew it out of the fathom- 
less depths of the past, and still it did not come to an end, 
there was no end to it, she must haul and haul at the rope of 
glittering consciousness, pull it out phosphorescent from the 
endless depths of the unconsciousness, till she was weary, ach- 
ing, exhausted, and fit to break, and yet she had not done. 

Ah, if only she might wake him! She turned uneasily. 
When could she rouse him and send him away? When could 
she disturb him? And she relapsed into her activity of auto- 
matic consciousness, that would never end. 

But the time was drawing near when she could wake him, 
It was like a release. The clock had struck four, outside in 
the night. Thank God, the night had passed almost away. At 
five he must go, and she would be released. Then she could 
relax and fill her own place. Now she was driven up against 
his perfect sleeping motion like a knife white-hot on a grind- 
stone. There was something monstrous about him, about his 
juxtaposition against her. 

The last hour was the longest. And yet, at last it passed. 
Her heart leapt with relief—yes, there was the slow, strong 
stroke of the church clock—at last, after this night of eternity. 
She waited to catch each slow, fatal reverberation. “Three—— 


DEATH AND LOVE 397 


four. five!” There, it was finished. A weight rolled off her. 

She raised herself, leaned over him tenderly, and kissed 
him. She was sad to wake him. After a few minutes, she 
kissed him again. But he did not stir. The darling, he was 
so deep in sleep! What a shame to take him out of it. She 
let him lie a little longer. But he must go—he must really go. 

With full over-tenderness she took his face between her 
hands, and kissed his eyes. The eyes opened, he remained mo- 
tionless, looking at her. Her heart stood still. To hide her 
face from his dreadful opened eyes, in the darkness, she bent 
down and kissed him, whispering: 

“You must go, my love.” 

But she was sick with terror, sick. 

He put his arms round her. Her heart sank. 

“But you must go, my love. It’s late.” 

“What time is it?” he said. 

Strange, his man’s voice. She quivered. It was an intoler- 
able oppression to her. 

“Past five o’clock,”’ she said. 

But he only closed his arms round her again. Her heart 
cried within her in torture. She disengaged herself firmly. 

“You really must go,” she said. 

“Not for a minute,” he said. 

She lay still, nestling against him, but unyielding. 

“Not for a minute,” he repeated. clasping her closely. 

“Yes,” she said, unyielding. “I’m afraid if you stay any 
longer.” 

There was a certain coldness in her voice that made him 
release her, and she broke away, rose and lit the candle. That 
then was the end. 

He got up. He was warm and full of life and desire. Yet he 
felt a little bit ashamed, humiliated, putting on his clothes be- 
fore her, in the candle-light. For he felt revealed, exposed to 
her, at a time when she was in some way against him. It was 
all very difficult to understand. He dressed himself quickly, 
without collar or tie. Still he felt full and complete, perfected. 
She thought it humiliating to see a man dressing: the ridiculous 


398 WOMEN IN LOVE 


shirt, the ridiculous trousers and braces. But again an idea 
saved her. 

“Tt is like a workman getting up to go to work,” thought 
Gudrun. “And I am like a workman’s wife.” But an ache 
like nausea was upon her: a nausea of him. 

He pushed his collar and tie into his overcoat pocket. Then 
he sat down and pulled on his boots. They were sodden, as 
were his socks and trouser-bottoms. But he himself was quick 
and warm. 

“Perhaps you ought to have put your boots on downstairs,” 
she said. 

At once, without answering, he pulled them off again, and 
stood holding them in his hand. She had thrust her feet into 
slippers, and flung a loose robe round her. She was ready. 
She looked at him as he stood waiting, his black coat but- 
toned to the chin, his cap pulled down, his boots in his hand. 
And the passionate almost hateful fascination revived in her 
for a moment. It was not exhausted. His face was so warm- 
looking, wide-eyed and full of newness, so perfect. She felt 
old, old. She went to him heavily, to be kissed. He kissed 
her quickly. She wished his warm, expressionless beauty did 
not so fatally put a spell on her, compel her and subjugate 
her. It was a burden upon her, that she resented, but could 
not escape. Yet when she looked at his straight man’s brows, 
and at his rather small, well-shaped nose, and at his blue, in- 
different eyes, she knew her passion for him was not yet satis- 
fied, perhaps never could be satisfied. Only now she was 
weary, with an ache like nausea. She wanted him gone. 

They went downstairs quickly. It seemed they made a 
prodigious noise. He followed her as, wrapped in her vivid 
green wrap, she preceded him with the light. She suffered 
badly with fear, lest her people should be roused. He hardly 
cared. He did not care now who knew. And she hated this 
in him. One must be cautious. One must preserve oneself. 

She led the way to the kitchen. It was neat and tidy, as 
the woman had left it. He looked up at the clock—twenty 
minutes past five! Then he sat down en a chair to put on his 


DEATH AND LOVE 399 


boots. She waited, watching his every movement. She wanted 
it to be over, it was a great nervous strain on her. 

He stood up—she unbolted the back door, and looked out. 
A cold, raw night, not yet dawn, with a piece of a moon in the 
vague sky. She was glad she need not go out. 

“Good-bye then,” he murmured. 

“T’ll come to the gate,” she said. 

And again she hurried on in front, to warn him of the steps. 
And at the gate, once more she stood on the step whilst he 
stood below her. 

“Good-bye,” she whispered. 

He kissed her dutifully, and turned away. 

She suffered torments hearing his firm tread going so dis- 
tinctly down the road. Ah, the insensitiveness of that firm 
tread! 

She closed the gate, and crept quickly and noiselessly back 
to bed. When she was in her room, and the door closed, and 
all safe, she breathed freely, and a great weight fell off her. 
She nestled down in bed, in the groove his body had made, in 
the warmth he had left. And excited, worn-out, yet still satis- 
fied, she fell soon into a deep, /heavy sleep. 

Gerald walked quickly through the raw darkness of the 
coming dawn. He met nobody. His mind was beautifully still 
and thoughtless, like a still pool, and his body full and warm 
and rich. He went quickly along towards Shortlands, in a 
grateful self-sufficiency. 


CHAPTER XXV 
MARRIAGE OR NOT 


Tue Brangwen family was going to move from Beldover. It 
was necessary now for the father to be in town. 

Birkin had taken out a marriage licence, yet Ursula de- 
ferred from day to day. She would not fix any definite time 
—she still wavered. Her month’s notice to leave the Grammar 
School was in its third week. Christmas was not far off. 

Gerald waited for the Ursula-Birkin marriage. It was some- 
thing crucial to him. 

“Shall we make it a double-barrelled affair?” he said to 
Birkin one day. 

“Who for the second shot?” asked Birkin. 

“Gudrun and me,” said Gerald, the venturesome twinkle in 
his eyes. 

Birkin looked at him steadily, as if somewhat taken aback. 

“Serious—or joking?” he asked. 

“Oh, serious. Shall I? Shall Gudrun and [ rush in along 
with you?” 

“Do by all means,” said Birkin. “I didn’t know you’d got 
that length.” 

“What length?” said Gerald, looking at the other man, and 
laughing. 

“Oh, yes, we’ve gone all the lengths.” 

“There remains to put it on a broad social basis, and to 
achieve a high moral purpose,” said Birkin. 

“Something like that: the length and breadth and height 
of it,” replied Gerald, smiling. 

“Oh, well,” said Birkin, “it’s a very admirable step to take, 
I should say.” 

Gerald looked at him closely. 

“Why aren’t you enthusiastic?” he asked. “I thought you 
were such dead nuts on marriage.” 

400 


MARRIAGE OR NOT 4O1 


Birkin lifted his shoulders. 

“One might as well be dead nuts on noses. ‘There are all 
sorts of noses, snub and otherwise—” 

Gerald laughed. 

“And all sorts of marriage, also snub and otherwise?” he 
said. : 

“That’s it.” 

“And you think if I marry, it will be snub?” asked Gerald 
quizzically, his head a little on one side. | 

Birkin laughed quickly. | 

“How do I know what it will be!” he said. “Don’t lam- 
baste me with my own parallels—” 

Gerald pondered a while. 

“But I should like to know your opinion, exactly,” he said. 

“On your marriage?—or marrying? Why should you want 
my opinion? I’ve got no opinions. I’m not interested in legal 
marriage, one way or another. It’s a mere question of con- 
venience.” 

Still Gerald watched him closely. 

“More than that, I think,” he said seriously. “However, 
you may be bored by the ethics of marriage, yet really to 
marry, in one’s own personal case, is something critical, 


”? 


“You mean there is something final in going to the registrar 
with a woman?” 

“If you’re coming back with her, I do,” said Gerald. “It 
is in some way irrevocable.” 

“Yes, I agree,” said Birkin. 

“No matter how one regards legal marriage, yet to enter 
into the married state, in one’s own personal imstance, is 
final—” 

“T believe it is,” said Birkin, “somewhere.” 

“The question remains then, should one do it,” said Gerald. 

Birkin watched him narrowly, with amused eyes. 

“You are like Lord Bacon, Gerald,” he said. “You argue 
it like a lawyer—or like Hamlet’s to-be-or-not-to-be. If I 
were you I would #o¢ marry: but ask Gudrun, not me. You’re 
not marrying me, are you?” 


402 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gerald did not heed the latter part of this speech. 

“Yes,” he said, “one must consider it coldly. It is some- 
thing critical. One comes to the point where one must take 
a step in one direction or another. And marriage is one 
direction—” 

“And what is the other?” asked Birkin quickly. 

Gerald looked up at him with hot, strangely-conscious eyes, 
that the other man could not understand. 

“T can’t say,” he replied. “If I knew that—”’ He moved 
uneasily on his feet, and did not finish. 

“You mean if you knew the alternative?” asked Birkin. 
“‘And since you don’t know it, marriage is a pis aller.” 

Gerald looked up at Birkin with the same hot, constrained 
eyes. 
ene does have the feeling that marriage is a pés ‘aller,” he 
admitted. 

“Then don’t do it,” said Birkin, “TI tell you,” he went on, 
“the same as I’ve said before, marriage in the old sense seems 
to me repulsive. Egoismé a deux is nothing to it. It’s a sort 
of tacit hunting in couples: the world all in couples, each 
couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests, 
and stewing in its own little privacy—it’s the most repulsive 
thing on earth.” 

“TI quite agree,” said Gerald. “There’s something inferior 
about it. But as I say, what’s the alternative?” 

“One should avoid this ome instinct. It’s not an instinct, 
it’s a habit of cowardliness. One should never have a home.” 

“T agree really,” said Gerald. ‘But there’s no alternative.” 

“We've got to find one. I do believe in a permanent union 
between a man and a woman. Chopping about is merely an 
exhaustive process. But a permanent relation between a man 
and a woman isn’t the last word—it certainly isn’t.” 

“Quite,” said Gerald. 

“In fact,” said Birkin, “because the relation between man 
and woman is made the supreme and exclusive relationship, 
that’s where all the tightness and meanness and insufficiency 
comes in.” 

“Yes, I believe you,” said Gerald. 


MARRIAGE OR NOT 403 


“You’ve got to take down the love-and-marriage ideal from 
its pedestal. We want something broader. I believe in the 
additienal perfect relationship between man and man—addi- 
tional to marriage.” 

“T can never see how they can be the same,” said Gerald. 

“Not the same—but equally important, equally creative, 
equally sacred, if you like.” 

Gerald moved uneasily. ‘You know, I can’t feel that,” 
said he. “Surely there can never be anything as strong be- 
tween man and man as sex love is between man and woman. 
Nature doesn’t provide the basis.” 

“Well, of course, I think she does. And I don’t think we 
shall ever be happy till we establish ourselves on this basis. 
You’ve got to get rid of the exclusiveness of married love. 
And you’ve got to admit the unadmitted love of man for man. 
It makes for a greater freedom for everybody, a greater power 
of individuality both in men and women.” 

“T know,” said Gerald, “you believe something like that. 
Only I can’t feel it, you see.” He put his hand on Birkin’s 
arm, with a sort of deprecating affection. And he smiled as if 
triumphantly. 

He was ready to be doomed. Marriage was like a doom to 
him. He was willing to condemn himself in marriage, to be- 
come like a convict condemned to the mines of the under- 
world, living no life in the sun, but having a dreadful subter- 
ranean activity. He was willing to accept this. And marriage 
was the seal of his condemnation. He was willing to be sealed 
thus in the underworld, like a soul damned but living forever 
in damnation. But he would not make any pure relationship 
with any other soul. He could not. Marriage was not the 
committing of himself into a relationship with Gudrun. It 
was a committing of himself in acceptance of the established 
world, he would accept the established order, in which he did 
not livingly believe, and then he would retreat to the under- 
world for his life. This he would do. 

The other way was to accept Rupert’s offer of alliance, to 
enter into the bond of pure trust and love with the other man, 
and then subsequently with the woman. If he pledged himself 


404 WOMEN IN LOVE 


with the man he would later be able to pledge himself with the 
woman: not merely in legal marriage, but in absolute, mystic 
marriage. 

Yet he could not accept the offer. There was a numbness 
upon him, a numbness either of unborn, absent volition, or of 
atrophy. Perhaps it was the absence of volition. For he was 
strangely elated at Rupert’s offer. Yet he was still more glad 
to reject it, not to be committed. 


CHAPTER XXVI 
A CHAIR 


THERE was a jumble market every Monday afternoon in the 
old market-place in town. Ursula and Birkin strayed down 
there one afternoon. They had been talking of furniture, and 
they wanted to see if there was any fragment they would 
like to buy, amid the heaps of rubbish collected on the cobble- 
stones. 

The old market-square was not very large, a mere bare 
patch of granite setts, usually with a few fruit-stalls, under a 
wall. It was in a poor quarter of the town. Meagre houses 
stood down one side, there was a hosiery factory, a great 
blank with myriad oblong windows, at the end, a street of 
little shops with flagstone pavement down the other side, and, 
for a crowning monument, the public baths, of new red brick, 
with a clock-tower. The people who moved about seemed 
stumpy and sordid, the air seemed to smell rather dirty, there 
was a sense of many mean streets ramifying off into warrens 
of meanness. Now and again a great chocolate-and-yellow 
tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the hosiery 
factory. 

Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out 
among the common people, in the jumbled place piled with 
old bedding, heaps of old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, 
muffled lots of unthinkable clothing. She and Birkin went 
unwillingly down the narrow aisle between the rusty wares. 
He was looking at the goods, she at the people. 

She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to 
have a baby, and who was turning over a mattress and making 
a young man, down-at-heel and dejected, feel it also. So 
secretive and active and anxious the young woman seemed, so 
reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going to marry 
her because she was having a child. 

405 


406 WOMEN IN LOVE 


When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked 
the old man seated on a stool among his wares, how much it 
was. He told her, and she turned to the young man. The 
latter was ashamed, and self-conscious. He turned his face: 
away, though he left his body standing there, and muttered 
aside. And again the woman anxiously and actively fingered 
the mattress and added up in her mind and bargained with the 
old, unclean man. All the while, the young man stood by, 
shamefaced and down-at-heel, submitting. 

“Look,” said Birkin, “there is a pretty chair.” 

“Charming!” cried Ursula. “Oh, charming.” 

It was an arm-chair of simple wood, probably birch, but of 
such fine delicacy of grace, standing there on the sordid stones, 
it almost brought tears to the eyes. It was square in shape, 
of the purest, slender lines, and four short lines of wood in 
the back, that reminded Ursula of harpstrings. 

“It was once,” said Birkin, “gilded—and it had a cane — 
seat. Somebody has nailed this wooden seat in. Look, here is 
a trifle of the red that underlay the gilt. The rest is all black, 
except where the wood is worn pure and glossy. It is the fine 
unity of the lines that is so attractive. Look, how they run 
and meet and counteract. But of course the wooden seat is 
wrong—it destroys the perfect lightness and unity in tension 
the cane gave. I like it though—” 

“Ah yes,” said Ursula, “so do I.” 

“How much is it?” Birkin asked the man. / 

“Ten shillings.” 

“And you will send it—?” 

It was bought. 

“So beautiful, so pure!” Birkin said. “It almost breaks 
my heart.” They walked along between the heaps of rub- 
bish. “My beloved country—it had something to express even 
when it made that chair.” 

“And hasn’t it now?” asked Ursula. She was always angry 
when he took this tone. 

“No, it hasn’t. When I see that clear, beautiful chair, and 
I think of England, even Jane Austen’s England—it had liv- 
ing thoughts to unfold even then, and pure happiness in unfold- 


A CHAIR 407 


ing them. And now, we can only fish among the rubbish heaps 
for the remnants of their old expression. There is no produc- 
tion in us now, only sordid and foul mechanicalness.” 

“Tt isn’t true,” cried Ursula. “Why must you always praise 
the past, at the expense of the present? Really, I don’t think 
so much of Jane Austen’s England. It was materialistic 
enough, if you like—” 

“Tt could afford to be materialistic,” said Birkin, ‘because 
it had the power to be something other—which we haven’t. 
We are materialistic because we haven’t the power to be any- 
thing else—try as we may, we can’t bring off anything but 
materialism: mechanism, the very soul of materialism.” 

Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed 
what he said. She was rebelling against something else. 

“And I hate your past. I’m sick of it,” she cried. “I be- 
lieve I even hate that old chair, though it is beautiful. It isn’t 
my sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its 
day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I’m 
sick of the beloved past.” 

“Not so sick as I am of the accursed present,” he said. 

“Yes, just the same. I hate the present—but I don’t want 
the past to take its place—I don’t want that old chair,” 

He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the 
sky shining beyond the tower of the public baths, and he 
seemed to get over it all. He laughed. 

“All right,” he said, “then let us not have it. I’m sick of 
it all, too. At any rate, one can’t go on living on the old bones 
of beauty.” 

“One can’t,” she cried. “I don’t want old things.” 

“The truth is, we don’t want things at all,” he replied. ‘The 
thought of a house and furniture of my own is hateful to me.” 

This startled her fora moment. Then she replied: 

“So it is to me. But one must live somewhere.” 

“Not somewhere—anywhere,” he said. “One should just 
live anywhere—not have a definite place. I don’t want a 
definite place. As soon as you get a room, and it is complete, 
you want to run from it. Now my rooms at the Mill are quite 
complete, I want them at the bottom of the sea. It is a hor- 


408 WOMEN IN LOVE 


rible tyranny of a fixed milieu, where each piece of furniture is 
a commandment-stone.” 

She clung to his arm as they walked away from the market. 

“But what are we going to do?” she said. “We must live 
somehow. And I do want some beauty in my surroundings. 
I want a sort of natural grandeur even, splendour.” 

“You'll never get it in houses and furniture—or even clothes. 
Houses and furniture and clothes, they are all terms of an old 
base world, a detestable society of man. And if you have a 
Tudor house and old, beautiful furniture, it is only the past 
perpetuated on top of you, horrible. And if you have a per- 
fect modern house done for you by. Poiret, it is something else 
perpetuated on top of you. It is all horrible. It is all pos- 
sessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a 
generalisation. You have to be like Rodin, Michael Angelo, 
and leave a piece of raw rock unfinished to your figure. You 
must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you 
are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the 
outside.” | | 

She stood in the street contemplating. 

“And we are never to have a complete place of our own— 
never a home?” she said. 

“Pray God, in this world, no,” he answered. 

“But there’s only this world,” she objected. 

He spread out his hands with a gesture of indifference. 

“Meanwhile, then, we'll avoid having things of our own,” 
he said. 

“But you’ve just bought a chair,” she said. 

“I can tell the man I don’t want it,” he replied. 

She pondered again. Then a queer little movement twitched 
her face. 

“No,” she said, “we don’t want it. I’m sick of old things.” 

“‘New ones as well,” he said. 

They retraced their steps. 

There—in front of some furniture, stood the young couple, 
the woman who was going to have a baby, and the narrow- 
faced youth. She was fair, rather short, stout. He was of 
medium height, attractively built. His dark hair fell side- 


A CHAIR 409 


ways over his brow, from under his cap, he stood strangely 
aloof, like one of the damned. 

“Let us give it to them,” whispered Ursula. ‘Look, they 
are getting a home together.” 

“I won’t aid and abet them in it,” he said petulantly, in- 
stantly sympathising with the aloof, furtive youth, against the 
active, procreant female. 

“Oh yes,” cried Ursula. “It’s right for them—there’s noth- 
ing else for them.” 

“Very well,” said Birkin, “you offer it to them. Ill watch.” 

Ursula went rather nervously to the young couple, who were 
discussing an iron washstand—or rather, the man was glancing 
furtively and wonderingly, like a prisoner, at the Apominable 
article, whilst the woman was arguing. 

“We bought a chair,” said Ursula, “and we don’t want it. 
Would you have it? We should be glad if you would.” 

The young couple looked round at her, not believing that 
she could be addressing them. 

“Would you care for it?” repeated Ursula. “It’s really very 
pretty—but—but—”’ she smiled rather dazzingly. 

The young couple only stared at her, and looked signifi- 
cantly at each other, to know what to do. And the man curi- 
ously obliterated himself, as if he could make himself invisible, 
as a rat Can. 

“We wanted to give it to you,” explained Ursula, now over- 
come with confusion and dread of them. She was attracted by 
the young man. He was a still, mindless creature, hardly a 
man at all, a creature that the towns have produced, strangely 
pure-bred and fine in one sense, furtive, quick, subtle. His 
lashes were dark and long and fine over his eyes, that had no 
mind in them, only a dreadful kind of subject, inward con- 
sciousness, glazed and dark. His dark brows and all his lines, 
were finely drawn. He would be a dreadful, but wonderful 
lover to a woman, so marvellously contributed. His legs would 
be marvellously subtle and alive, under the shapeless trousers, 
he had some of the fineness and stillness and silkiness of a 
dark-eyed, silent rat. 

Ursula had apprehended him with a fine frisson of attrac- 


410 WOMEN IN LOVE 


tion. The full-built woman was staring offensively. Again 
Ursula forgot him. 

“Won’t you have the chair?” she said. 

The man looked at her with a sideways look of apprecia- 
tion, yet far-off, almost insolent. The woman drew herself 
up. There was a certain coster-monger richness about her. 
She did not know what Ursula was after, she was on her guard, 
hostile. Birkin approached, smiling wickedly at seeing Ursula 
so nonplussed and frightened. 

“What’s the matter?” he said, smiling. His ‘eyelids had 
dropped slightly, there was about him the same suggestive, 
mocking secrecy that was in the bearing of the two city crea- 
tures. The man jerked his head a little on one side, indicating © 
Ursula, and said, with curious, amiable, jeering warmth: 

“What she warnt?—eh?” An odd smile writhed his lips. 

Birkin looked at him from under his slack, ironical eyelids. 

“To give you a chair—that—with the label on it,” he said, 
pointing. 

The man looked at the object indicated. There was a curi- 
ous freemasonry in male, outlawed understanding between the 
two men. | 

“What’s she warnt to give it ws for, guvnor,” he replied, in 
a tone of free intimacy that insulted Ursula. 7 

“Thought you’d like it—it’s a pretty chair. We bought it 
and don’t want it. No need for you to have it, don’t be 
frightened,” said Birkin, with a wry smile. 

The man glanced up at him, half inimical, half recognising. 

“Why don’t you want it for yourselves, if you’ve just bought 
it?” asked the woman coolly. “ ’Tain’t good enough for you, 
now you’ve had a look at it. Frightened it’s got something in 
it, 11 bet.” 

She was looking at Ursula, admiringly, but with some resent- 
ment. 

“I’d never thought of that,” said Birkin. “But no, the 
wood’s too thin everywhere.” 

“You see,” said Ursula, her face luminous and pleased. “We 
are just going to get married, and we thought we’d buy things. 


A CHAIR All 


Then we decided, just now, that we wouldn’t have furniture, 
we'd go abroad.” 

The full-built, slightly blowsy city girl looked at the fine 
face of the other woman, with appreciation. They appreciated 
each other. The youth stood aside, his face expressionless and 
timeless, the thin line of the black moustache drawn strangely 
suggestive over his rather wide, closed mouth. He was im- 
passive, abstract, like some dark suggestive presence, a gutter- 
presence. 

“Tt’s all right to be some folks,” said the city girl, turning 
to her own young man. He did not look at her, but he smiled 
with the lower part of his face, putting his head aside in an 
odd gesture of assent. His eyes were unchanging, glazed with 
darkness. 

“Cawsts something to chynge your mind,” he said, in an 
incredibly low accent. 

“Only ten shillings this time,” said Birkin. 

The man looked up at him with a grimace of a smile, furtive, 
unsure. 

“Cheap at ’arf a quid, guvnor,” he said. ‘Not like getting 
divawced.” 

“We're not married yet,” said Birkin. 

“No, mo more aren’t we,” said the young woman loudly. 
“But we shall be, a Saturday.” 

Again she looked at the young man with a determined, pro- 
tective look, at once overbearing and very gentle. He grinned 
sicklily, turning away his head. She had got his manhood, and 
Lord, what did he care! He had a strange furtive pride and 
slinking singleness. 

“Good luck to you,” said Birkin. 

“Same to you,” said the young woman. Then, rather tenta- 
tively: “When’s yours coming off, then?” 

Birkin looked round at Ursula. 

“It’s for the lady to say,” he replied. ‘We go to the registrar 
the moment she’s ready.” 

Ursula laughed, covered with confusion and bewilderment. 

“No ’urry,” said the young man, grinning suggestive. 


412 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Oh, don’t break your neck to get there,” said the young 
woman. “Slike when you're dead—you’re a long time 
married.” 

The young man turned aside as if this hit him. 

“The longer the better, let us hope,”’ said Birkin. 

“That’s it, guvnor,” said the young man admiringly. “En- 
joy it while it larsts—niver whip a dead donkey.” 

“Only when he’s shamming dead,” said the young woman, 
looking at her young man with caressive tenderness of 
authority. 

“Aw, there’s a difference,” he said satirically. ” 

“What about the chair?” said Birkin. 

“Ves, all right,” said the woman. 

They trailed off to the dealer, the handsome but abject 
young fellow hanging a little aside. 

“That’s it,” said Birkin. “Will you take it with you, or 
have the address altered?” 

“Oh, Fred can carry it. Make him do what he can for the 
dear old ’ome.” 

“Mike use of ’im,” said Fred, grimly humorous, as he took 
the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet 
curiously abject, slinking. 

“‘ Ere’s mother’s cosy chair,” he said. “Warnts a cushion.” 
And he stood it down on the market stones. 

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” laughed Ursula. 

“Oh, I do,” said the young woman. 

“Ave a sit in it, you'll wish you’d kept it,” said the young 
man. 

Ursula promptly sat down in the middle of the market-place. 

“Awfully comfortable,” she said. ‘But rather hard. You 
try it.” She invited the young man to a-seat. But he turned 
uncouthly, awkwardly aside, glancing up at her with quick 
bright eyes, oddly suggestive, like a quick, live rat. 

“Don’t spoil him,” said the young woman. “He’s not used 
to armchairs, ’e isn’t.” 

The young man turned away, and said, with averted grin: 

“Only warnts legs on ’is.” 


A CHAIR 413 


The four parted. The young woman thanked them. 
“Thank you for the chair—it’ll last till it gives way.” 
“Keep it for an ornyment,” said the young man. 

“Good afterncon—good afternoon,” said Ursula and Birkin. 

“Goo’-luck to you,” said the young man, glancing and avoid- 
ing Birkin’s eyes, as he turned aside his head. 

The two couples went asunder, Ursula clinging to Birkin’s 
arm. When they had gone some distance, she glanced back 
and saw the young man going beside the full, easy young 
woman. His trousers sank over his heels, he moved with a 
sort of slinking evasion, more crushed with odd self-conscious- 
ness now he had the slim old arm-chair to carry, his arm over 
the back, the four fine, square tapering legs swaying perilously 
near the granite setts of the pavement. And yet he was some- 
where indomitable and separate, like a quick, vital rat. He 
had a queer, subterranean beauty, repulsive too. 

“How strange they are!” said Ursula. 

“Children of men,” he said. “They remind me of Jesus: 
‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ ” 

“But they aren’t the meek,” said Ursula. 

“Yes, I don’t know why, but they are,” he replied. 

They waited for the tramcar. Ursula sat on top and looked 
out on the town. The dusk was just dimming the hollows of 
crowded houses. 

“And are they going to inherit the earth?” she said. 

“Yes—they.” 

“Then what are we going to do?” she asked. “We’re not 
like them—are we? We're not the meek?” 

“No. We've got to live in the chinks they leave us.” 

“How horrible!” cried Ursula. “I don’t want to live in 
chinks.” 

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They are the children of men, 
they like market-places and street-corners best. That leaves 
plenty of chinks.” 

“All the world,” she said. 

“Ah no—but some room.” 

The tramcar mounted slowly up the hill, where the ugly 


414 WOMEN IN LOVE 


winter-grey masses of houses looked like a vision of hell that 
is cold and angular. They sat and looked. Away in the dis- 
tance was an angry redness of sunset. It was all cold, some- 
how small, crowded, and like the end of the world. 

“T don’t mind it even then,” said Ursula, looking at the re- 
pulsiveness of it all. “It doesn’t concern me.” 

“No more it does,” he replied, holding her hand. “One 
needn’t see. One goes one’s way. In my world it is sunny and 
spacious—”’ 

“It is, my love, isn’t it?” she cried, hugging near to him on 
the top of the tramcar, so that the other passengers stared 
at them. | 

“And we will wander about on the face of the earth,” he 
said, “and we’ll look at the world beyond just this bit.” 

There was a long silence. Her face was radiant like gold, as 
she sat thinking. 

“Y don’t want to inherit the earth,” she said. “I don’t 
want to inherit anything.” 

He closed his hand over hers. 

“Neither do I. I want to be disinherited.” 

She clasped his fingers closely. 

“We won’t care about anything,” she said. 

He sat still, and laughed. 

“And we'll be married, and have done with them,” she added. 

Again he laughed. 

“It’s one way of getting rid of everything,” she said, “to 
get married.” 

“And one way of accepting the whole world,” he added. 

“A whole other world, yes,” she said happily. 

“Perhaps there’s Gerald—and Gudrun—” he said. 

“Tf there is there is, you see,” she said. “It’s no good our 
worrying. We can’t really alter them, can we?” 

“No,” he said. “One has no right to try—not with the best 
intentions in the world.” 

“Do you try to force them?” she asked. 

“Perhaps,” he said. “Why should I want him to be free, 
if it isn’t his business?” 


A CHAIR 41s 


She paused for a time. 

“We can’t make him happy, anyhow,” she said. ‘“He’d 
have to be it of himself.” 

“T know,” he said. “But we want other people with us, 
don’t we?” | 

“Why should we?” she asked. 

“T don’t know,” he said uneasily. “One has a hankering 
after a sort of further fellowship.” 

“But why?” she insisted. “Why should you hanker after 
other people? Why should you need them?” 

This hit him right on the quick. His brows knitted. 

“Does it end with just our two selves?” he asked, tense. 

“Yes—what more do you want? If anybody likes to come 
along, let them. But why must you run after them?” 

His face was tense and unsatisfied. 

“You see,” he said, “I always imagine our being really 
happy with some few other people—a little freedom with 
people.” 

She pondered for a moment. 

“Yes, one does want that. But it must Zappen. You can’t 
do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think 
you can force the flowers to come out. People must love us 
because they love us—you can’t make them.” 

“T know,” he said. “But must one take no steps at all? 
Must one just go as if one were alone in the world—the only 
creature in the world?” 

“You’ve got me,” she said. “Why should you meed others? 
Why must you force people to agree with you? Why can’t 
you be single by yourself, as you are always saying? You try . 
to bully Gerald—as you tried to bully Hermione. You must 
learn to be alone. And it’s so horrid of you. You’ve got me. 
And yet you want to force other people to love you as well. 
You do try to bully them to love you. And even then, you 
don’t want their love.” 

His face was full of real perplexity. 

“Don’t I?” he said. “It’s the problem I can’t solve. I 
know I want a perfect and complete relationship with you: 


416 WOMEN IN LOVE 


and we've nearly got it—we really have. But beyond that. 
Do I want a real, ultimate relationship with Gerald? Do I 
want a final, almost extra-human relationship with him—a 
relationship in the ultimate of me and him—or don’t I?” 

She looked at him for a long time, with strange bright eyes, 
but she did not answer. . 


CHAPTER XXVII 
FLITTING 


Tuat evening Ursula returned home very bright-eyed and 
- wondrous—which irritated her people. Her father came home 
at supper-time, tired after the evening class, and the 
long journey home. Gudrun was reading, the mother sat in 
silence. 

Suddenly Ursula said to the company at large im a bright 
voice: ‘Rupert and I are going to be married to-morrow.” 

Her father turned round, stiffly. 

“You what?” he said. 

“To-morrow!” echoed Gudrun. 

“Indeed!” said the mother. 

But Ursula only smiled wonderfully, and did not reply. 

“Married to-morrow!” cried her father harshly. “What are 
you talking about!” 

“Yes,” said Ursula. ‘Why not?” Those two words, from 
her, always drove him mad. “Everything is all right—we 
shall go to the registrar’s office—” 

There was a second’s hush in the room, after Ursula’s blithe 
vagueness. 

“Really, Ursula!” said Gudrun. 

“Might we ask why there has been all this secrecy?” de- 
_ manded the mother, rather superbly. | 

“But there hasn’t,” said Ursula. ‘You knew.” 

“Who knew?” now cried the father. “Who knew? What 
do you mean by your ‘you knew’?” 

He was in one of his stupid rages, she instantly closed against 
him. 

“Of course you knew,” she said coolly. ‘You knew we were 
going to get married.” 

There was a dangerous pause. 

417 


418 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“‘We knew you were going to get married, did we? Knew! 
Why then does anybody know anything about you, you shifty 
bitch!” 

“Father!” cried Gudrun, flushing deep in violent remon- 
strance. Then, in a cold, but gentle voice, as if to remind her 
sister to be tractable. “But isn’t it a fearfully sudden decision, 
Ursula?” she asked. 

“No, not really,” replied Ursula, with the same maddening 
cheerfulness. ‘He’s been wanting me to agree for weeks—he’s 
had the license ready. Only I—I wasn’t ready in myself. 
Now I am ready—is there anything to be disagreeable about?” 

“Certainly not,” said Gudrun, but in a tone of cold reproof. 
“You are perfectly free to do as you like.” 

~® ‘Ready in yourself’—yourself, that’s all that matters, isn’t 
it? ‘I wasn’t ready in myself,’” he mimicked her phrase 
offensively. ‘You and yourself, you’re of some importance, 
aren’t you?” 

She drew herself up and set back her throat, her eyes shining 
yellow and dangerous. 

“I am to myself,” she said, wounded and mortified. “I 
know I am not to anybody else. You only wanted to bully 
me—you never cared for my happiness.” 

He was leaning forward watching her, his face intense like a 
spark. 

“Ursula, what are you saying? Keep your tongue still,” 
cried her mother. 

Ursula swung round, and the lights in her eyes flashed. 

“No, I won’t,” she cried. “I won’t hold my tongue and be 
bullied. What does it matter which day I get married—what 
does it matter! It doesn’t affect anybody but myself.” 

Her father was tense and gathered together like a cat about 
to spring. 

“Doesn’t it?” he cried, coming nearer to her. She shrank 
away. 

“No, how can it?” she replied, shrinking but stubborn. 

“Tt doesn’t matter to me then, what you do—what becomes 
of you?” he cried, in a strange voice like a cry. 

The mother and Gudrun stood back as if hypnotised. 


i LS oe ll 
_* = he = 


FLITTING 419 


“No,” stammered Ursula. Her father was very near to her. 
“You only want to—” 

She knew it was dangerous, and she stopped. He was 
gathered together, every muscle ready. 

“What?” he challenged. 

“Bully me,” she muttered, and even as her lips were moving, 
his hand had caught her smack at the side of the face and she 
was sent up against the door. 

“Father!” cried Gudrun in a high voice, “it is impossible!” 

He stood unmoving. Ursula recovered, her hand was on the 
door handle. She slowly drew herself up. He seemed doubtful 
now. 

“Tt’s true,” she declared, with brilliant tears in her eyes, 
her head lifted up in defiance. “What has your love meant, 
what did it ever mean?—bullying, and denial—it did—” 

He was advancing again with strange, tense movements, and 
clenched fist, and the face of a murderer. But swift as lightning 
she had flashed out of the door, and they heard her running 
upstairs. 

He stood for a moment looking at the door. Then, like a 
defeated animal, he turned and went back to his seat by the fire. 

Gudrun was very white. Out of the intense silence, the 
mother’s voice was heard saying, cold and angry: 

“Well, you shouldn’t take so much notice of her.” 

Again the silence fell, each followed a separate set of 
emotions and thoughts. 

Suddenly the door opened again: Ursula, dressed in hat and 
furs, with a small valise in her hand. 

“Good-bye!”’ she said, in her maddening, bright, almost 
mocking tone. “I’m going.” : 

And in the next instant the door was closed, they heard 


_- the outer door, then her quick steps down the garden path, 


then the gate banged, and her light footfall was gone. There 
was a silence like death in the house. 

Ursula went straight to the station, hastening heedlessly 
on winged feet. There was no train, she must walk on to the 
junction. As she went through the darkness, she began to 
cry, and she wept bitterly, with a dumb, heart-broken, child’s 


420 WOMEN IN LOVE 


anguish, all the way on the road, and in the train. Time passed 
unheeded and unknown, she did not know where she was, nor 
what was taking place. Only she wept from fathomless depths 
of hopeless, hopeless grief, the terrible grief of a child, that 

knows no extenuation. | 

Yet her voice had the same defensive brightness as she 
spoke to Birkin’s landlady at the door. 

“Good evening! Is Mr. Birkin in? Can I see him?” 

“Yes, he’s in. He’s in his study.” 

Ursula slipped past the woman. His door opened. He had 
heard her voice. 

“Hello!” he exclaimed in surprise, seeing her standing there 
with the valise in her hand, and marks of tears on her face. 
She was one who wept without showing many oe like a 
child. 

“Do I look a sight?” she said, shrinking. 

“No—why? Come in,” he took the bag from her hand and 
they went into the study. 

There—immediately, her lips began to tremble like those of 
a child that remembers again, and the tears came rushing up. 

‘““What’s the matter?” he asked, taking her in his arms. She 
sobbed violently on his shoulder, whilst he held her still, 
waiting. 

“What’s the matter?” he said again, when she was quieter. 
But she only pressed her face further into his shoulder, in pain, 
like a child that cannot tell. 

“What is it, then?” he asked. 

Suddenly she broke away, wiped her eyes, regained her 
composure, and went and sat in a chair. 

“Father hit me,” she announced, sitting bunched up, rather 
like a ruffied bird, her eyes very bright. 

“What for?” he said. 

She looked away, and would not answer. There was a 
pitiful redness about her sensitive nostrils, and her quivering 
lips. 

“Why?” he repeated, in his strange, soft, penetrating voice. 

She looked round at him, rather defiantly. 


Se eS, eS 


FLITTING 421 


“Because I said I was going to be married to-morrow, and 
he bullied me.” 

“Why did he bully you?” 

Her mouth dropped again, she remembered the scene once 
more, the tears came up. 

“Because I said he didn’t care—and he doesn’t, it’s only 
his domineeringness that’s hurt—” she said, her mouth pulled 
awry by her weeping, all the time she spoke, so that he almost 
smiled, it seemed so childish. Yet it was not childish, it was a 
mortal conflict, a deep wound. . 

“Tt isn’t quite true,” he said. “And even so, you shouldn’t 
say it.” 

“It is true—it is true,” she wept, “and I won’t be bullied by 
his pretending it’s love—when it isn’t—he doesn’t care, how 
can he—no, he can’t—” 

He sat in silence. She moved him beyond himself. 

“Then you shouldn’t rouse him, if he can’t,” replied Birkin 
quietly. | 

“And I dave loved him, I have,” she wept.: ‘I’ve loved him 
always, and he’s always done this to me, he has—” 

“Tt’s been a love of opposition, then,” he said. “Never 
mind—it will be all right. It’s nothing desperate.” 

“Yes,” she wept, “it is, it is.” 

“Why?” 

“T shall never see him again—” 

“Not immediately. Don’t cry, you had to break with him, 


it had to be—don’t cry.” 


He went over to her and kissed her fine, fragile hair, touching 


| her wet cheeks gently. 


“Don’t cry,” he repeated, “don’t cry any more.” | 
He held her head close against him, very close and quiet. 
At last she was still. Then she looked up, her eyes wide and 


i . frightened. 


“Don’t you want me?” she asked. 
“Want you?” His darkened, steady eyes puzzled her and 


| did not give her play. 


“Do you wish I hadn’t come?” she asked, anxious now 


; again for fear she might be out of place. 


422 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“No,” he said. “I wish there hadn’t been the violence—so 
much ugliness—but perhaps it was inevitable.” 

She watched him in silence. He seemed deadened. 

“But where shall I stay?” she asked, feeling humiliated. 

He thought for a moment. 

“Here, with me,” he said. “We’re married as much to-day 
as we shall be to-morrow.” 

“Buyut—” E 

““Tll tell Mrs. Varley,” he said. “Never mind now.” 

He sat looking at her. She could feel his darkened steady 
eyes looking at her all the time. It made her a little bit 
' frightened. She pushed her hair off her forehead nervously. 

“Do I look ugly?” she said. 

And she blew her nose again. 

A small smile came round his eyes. 

“No,” he said, “‘fortunately.”’ 

And he went across to her, and gathered her like a belonging 
in his arms. She was so tenderly beautiful, he could not 
bear to see her, he could only bear to hide her against himself. 

Now, washed all clean by her tears, she was new and frail like 
a flower just unfolded, a flower so new, so tender, so made 
perfect by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, 
he must hide her against himself, cover his eyes against her. 
She had the perfect candour of creation, something translucent 
and simple, like a radiant, shining flower that moment unfolded 
in primal blessedness. She was so new, so wonder-clear, so 
undimmed. And he was so old, so steeped in heavy memories. 
Her soul was new, undefined and glimmering with the unseen. 
And his soul was dark and gloomy, it had only one grain of 
living hope, like a grain of mustard seed. But this one living 
grain in him matched the perfect youth in her. 

“I love you,” he whispered as he kissed her, and trembled 
with pure hope, like a man who is born again to a wonderful, 
lively hope far exceeding the bounds of death. 

She could not know how much it meant to him, how much 
he meant by the few words. Almost childish, she wanted proof, 
and statement, even over-statement, for everything seemed still 
uncertain, unfixed to her. 


FLITTING 423 


But the passion of gratitude with which he received her 
into his soul, the extreme, unthinkable gladness of knowing 
himself living and fit to unite with her, he, who was so nearly 
dead, who was so near to being gone with the rest of his race 
down the slope of mechanical death, could never be understood 
by her. He worshipped her as age worships youth, he gloried 
in her, because, in his one grain of faith, he was young as she, 
he was her proper mate. This marriage with her was his 
resurrection and his life. 

All this she could not know. She wanted to be made much 
of, to be adored. There were infinite distances of silence 
between them. How could he tell her of the immanence of her 
beauty, that was not form, or weight, or colour, but something 
like a strange, golden light! How could he know himself what 
her beauty lay in, for him. He said “Your nose is beautiful, 
your chin is adorable.” But it sounded like lies, and she was 
disappointed, hurt. Even when he said, whispering with truth, 
“TI love you, I love you,” it was not the real truth. It was 
something beyond love, such a gladness of having surpassed 


q oneself, of having transcended the old existence. How could 


he say “I” when he was something new and unknown, not 
himself at all? This I, this old formula of the age, was a dead 


letter. 


In the new, superfine bliss, a,peace superseding knowledge, 


| there was no I and you, there was only the third, unrealised 


_ wonder, the wonder of existing not as oneself, but in a 
_ consummation of my being and of her being in a new one, a 
| new, paradisal unit regained from the duality. Nor can I say 
_ “TI love you,” when I have ceased to be, and you have ceased 


to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new 
oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to 


aq answer, all is perfect and at one. Speech travels between the 
_ separate parts. But in the perfect One there is perfect silence 
_ of bliss. 


They were married by law on the next day, and she did as 


4 he bade her, she wrote to her father and mother. Her mother 
| replied, not her father. 


She did not go back to school. She stayed with Birkin in 


424 WOMEN IN LOVE 


his rooms, or at the Mill, moving with him as he moved. But 
she did not see anybody, save Gudrun and Gerald. She was all 
strange and wondering as yet, but relieved as by dawn. 

Gerald sat talking to her one afternoon in the warm study 
down at the Mill. Rupert had not yet come home. 

“You are happy?” Gerald asked her, with a smile. 

“Very happy!” she cried, shrinking a little in her brightness. 

“Ves, one can see it.” 

“Can one?” cried Ursula in surprise. 

He looked up at her with a communicative smile. 

“Oh yes, plainly.” 

She was pleased. She meditated a moment. 

“And can you see that Rupert is happy as well?” 

He lowered his eyelids, and looked aside. 

“Oh yes,” he said. 

«e Really! 3? 

“Oh yes. 3 

He was very quiet, as if it were something not to be talked 
about by him. He seemed sad. => 

She was very sensitive to suggestion. She asked the question 
he wanted her to ask. 

“Why don’t you be happy as well?” she said. “You could 
be just the same.” 

He paused a moment. 

“With Gudrun?” he asked. 

“Yes!” she cried, her eyes glowing. But there was a strange 
tension, an emphasis, as if they were asserting their wishes, 
against the truth. 

“You think Gudrun would have me, and we should be 
happy?” he said. 

“Yes, I’m sure!” she cried. 

Her eyes were round with delight. Yet underneath she was 
constrained, she knew her own insistence. 

“Oh, I’m so glad,” she added. 

He smiled. 

“What makes you glad?” he said. 

“For her sake,” she replied. “I’m sure you’d—you’re the 
right man for her.” 


FLITTING 425 


“Vou are?” he said. “And do you think she would agree 
with you?” 

“Oh yes!” she exclaimed hastily. Then, upon reconsidera- 
tion, very uneasy: “Though Gudrun isn’t so very simple, is she? 
One doesn’t know her in five minutes, does one? She’s not 
like me in that.” She laughed at him with her strange, open, 
dazzled face. 

“You think she’s not much like you?” Gerald asked. | 

She knitted her brows. 

“Oh, in many ways she is. But I never know what she 
will do when anything new comes.” 

“You don’t?” said Gerald. He was silent for some moments. 
Then he moved tentatively. “I was going to ask her, in any 
case, to go away with me at Christmas,” he said, in a very 
small, cautious voice. . 

“Go away with you? For a time, you mean?” 

“As long as she likes,” he said, with a deprecating movement, 

They were both silent for some minutes. 

“Of course,” said Ursula at last, “she might just be willing 
to rush into marriage. You can see.” 

“Yes,” smiled Gerald. “I can see. But in case she won’t 
—do you think she would go abroad with me for a few days— 
or for a fortnight?” 

“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “I’d ask her.” 

“Do you think we might all go together?” 

“All of us?” Again Ursula’s face lighted up. “It would 
be rather fun, don’t you think?” 

“Great fun,” he said. 

' “And then you could see,” said Ursula. 

“What?” 

“How things went. I think it is best to take the honeymoot 
before the wedding—don’t you?” 

She was pleased with this mot. He laughed. 

“In certain cases,” he said. “I’d rather it were so in my 
own case.” 


“Would you!” exclaimed Ursula. Then doubtingly: “Yes, 


_ perhaps you’re right. One should please oneself.” 


426 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Birkin came in a little later, and Ursula told him what had 
been said. 

“Gudrun!” exclaimed Birkin. ‘“She’s a born mistress, just 
as Gerald is a born lover—amant en titre. If as somebody 
says all ote are either wives or mistresses, then Gudrun is 
a mistress.” 

“And all men either lovers or eaavensipigl cried Ursula. “But 
why not both?” 

“The one excludes the other,” he laughed. 

“Then I want a lover,” cried Ursula. 

“No you don’t,” he said. 

“But I do,” she wailed. 

He kissed her, and laughed. 

It was two days after this that Ursula was to go to fetch 
her things from the house in Beldover. The removal had 
taken place, the family had gone. Gudrun had rooms in 
Willey Green. 

Ursula had not seen her parents since her marriage. She 
wept over the rupture, yet what was the good of making it up! 
Good or not good, she could not go to them. So her things 
had been left behind and she and Gudrun were to walk over 
for them, in the afternoon. 

It was a wintry afternoon, with red in the sky, when they 
arrived at the house. The windows were dark and blank, 
already the place was frightening. A stark, void entrance-hall 
struck a chill to the hearts of the girls. 

“T don’t believe I dare have come in alone,” said Ursula. 
“Tt frightens me.” 

“Ursula!” cried Gudrun. “Isn’t it amazing! Can you 
believe you lived in this place and never felt it? How I lived 
here a day without dying of terror, I cannot conceive!” 

They looked in the big dining-room. It was a good-sized 
room, but now a cell would have been lovelier. The large 
bay windows were naked, the floor was stripped, and a border 
of dark polish went round the tract of pale boarding. In the 
faded wall-paper were dark patches where furniture had stood, 
where pictures had hung. The sense of walls, dry, thin, 
flimsy-seeming walls, and a flimsy flooring, pale with its 


2. ee — 


ee a 


—_ 
tan 


FLITTING 427 


artificial black edges, was neutralising to the mind. Every- 
thing was null to the senses, there was enclosure without 
substance, for the walls were dry and papery. Where were 
they standing, on earth, or suspended in some card-board box? 
In the hearth was burnt paper, and scraps of half-burnt paper. 

“Imagine that we passed our days here!” said Ursula. 

“T know,” cried Gudrun. “It is too appalling. What must 
we be like, if we are the contents of this!” 

“Vile!” said Ursula. “It really is.” 

And she recognised half-burnt covers of ‘“Vogue’—half-burnt 
representations of women in gowns—lying under the grate. 

They went to the drawing-room. Another piece of shut-in 
air; without weight or substance, only a sense of intolerable 
papery imprisonment in nothingness. The kitchen did look 
more substantial, because of the red-tiled floor and the stove 
but it was cold and horrid. 

The two girls tramped hollowly up the bare stairs. Every 
sound re-echoed under their hearts. They tramped down the 
bare corridor. Against the wall of Ursula’s bedroom were her 
things—a trunk,’ a work-basket, some books, loose coats, a 
hat-box, standing desolate in the universal emptiness of the 
dusk. 

“A cheerful sight, aren’t they?” said Ursula, looking down 
at her forsaken possessions. 

“Very cheerful,” said Gudrun. 

The two girls set to, carrying everything down to the front 
door. Again and again they made the hollow, re-echoing 
transit. The whole place seemed to resound about them with 
a noise of hollow, empty futility. In the distance the empty, 
invisible rooms sent forth a vibration almost of obscenity. 
They almost fied with the last articles, into the out-of-door. 

- But it was cold. They were waiting for Birkin, who was 
coming with the car. They went indoors again, and upstairs 
to their parents’ front bedroom, whose windows looked down 
on the road, across the country at the black-barred sunset, 
black and red barred, without light. 

They sat down in the window-seat, to wait. Both girls 


428 WOMEN IN LOVE 


were looking over the room. It was void, with a meaningless- 
ness that was almost dreadful __- 

“Really,” said Ursula, “this room couldn’t be sacred, could 
it?” 

Gudrun looked over it with slow eyes. 

“Tmpossible,” she replied. 

“When I think of their lives—father’s and mother’s, their 
love, and their marriage, and all of us children, and our 
bringing-up—would you have such a life, Prune?” 

“T wouldn’t, Ursula.” 

“Tt all seems so nothing—their two lives—there’ S no meaning 
in it. Really, if they had mot met, and mot married, and not 
lived together—it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?” 

“Of course—you can’t tell,” said Gudrun. 

“No. But if I thought my life was going to be like it— 
Prune,” she caught Gudrun’s arm, “I should run.’ 

Gudrun was silent for a few moments. 

“As a matter of fact, one cannot contemplate the ordinary 
life—one cannot contemplate it,” replied Gudrun. “With you, 
Ursula, it is quite different. You will be out of it all, with 
Birkin. He’s a special case. But with the ordinary man, who 
has his life fixed in one place, marriage is just impossible. 
There may be, and there are, thousands of women who want it, 
and could conceive of nothing else. But the very thought of it 
sends me mad. One must be free, above all, one must be free. 
One may forfeit everything else, but one must be free—one 
must not become 7, Pinchbeck Street—or Somerset Drive—or 
Shortlands. No man will be sufficient to-make that good—no 
man! ‘To marry, one must have a free lance, or nothing, a 
comrade-in-arms, a Gliicksritter. A man with a position in the 
social world—well, it is just impossible, impossible!” 

“What a lovely word—a Gliicksritter!”? said Ursula. ‘So 
much nicer than a soldier of fortune.” 

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Gudrun. “I’d tilt the world with a 
Gliicksritter. But a home, an establishment! Ursula, what 
would it mean?—think!”’ 

“I know,” said Ursula. ‘““We’ve had one home—that’s enough 
for me.” 


FLITTING 429 


“Quite enough,” said Gudrun. 

“The little grey home in the west,” quoted Ursula ironically. 

“Doesn’t it sound grey, too,” said Gudrun grimly. 

They were interrupted by the sound of the car. There was 
Birkin. Ursula was surprised that she felt so lit up, that she 
became suddenly so free from the ceennsingn of grey homes in 
the west. 

They heard his heels click on the hall pavement below. 

“Hello!” he called, his voice echoing alive through the house. 
Ursula smiled to herself. He was frightened of the place too. 

“Hello! Here we are,” she called downstairs. And they 
heard him quickly running up. 

“This is a ghostly situation,” he said. 

“These houses don’t have ghosts—they’ve never had any 
personality, and only a place with personality can have a 
ghost,” said Gudrun. 

“I suppose so. Are you both weeping over the past?” 

“We are,” said Gudrun, grimly. 

Ursula laughed. 

“Not weeping that it’s gone, but weeping that it ever was,” 
she said. 

“Oh,” he replied, relieved. 

He sat down for a moment. There was something in his 
presence, Ursula thought, lambent and alive. It made even 
the impertinent structure of this null house disappear. 

“Gudrun says she could not bear to be married and put into 
a house,” said Ursuia meaningful—they knew this referred 
to Gerald. 

He was silent for some moments. 

“Well,” he said, “if you know beforehand you couldn’t 
stand it, you’re safe.” 

“Quite!” said Gudrun. 

“Why does every woman think her aim in life is to have a 
hubby and a little grey home in the west? Why is this the 
goal of life? Why should it be?” said Ursula. 

“Tl faut avoir le respect de ses bétises,” said Birkin. 

“But you needn’t have the respect for the Détise before 
you’ve committed it,” laughed Ursula: 


430 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Ah then, des bétises du papa?” 

“Et de la maman,” added Gudrun satirically. 

“Et des voisins,”’ said Ursula. 

They all laughed, and rose. It was getting dark. They 
carried the things to the car. Gudrun locked the door of the 
empty house. Birkin had lighted the lamps of the automobile. 
It all seemed very happy, as if they were setting out. 

“Do you mind stopping at Coulsons. I have to leave the 
key there,” said Gudrun. 

“Right,” said Birkin, and they moved off. 

They stopped in the main street. The shops were just 
lighted, the last miners were passing home along the cause- 
ways, half-visible shadows in their grey pit-dirt, moving 
through the blue air. But their feet rang harshly in manifold 
sound, along the pavement. 

How pleased Gudrun was to come out of the shop, and 
enter the car, and be borne swiftly away into the down-hill 
of palpable dusk, with Ursula and Birkin! What an adven- 
ture life seemed at this moment! How deeply, how suddenly 
she envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open 
door—so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that 
was gone and the world to come were nothing to her. Ah, if 
she could be just like that, it would be perfect. | 

For always, except in her moments of excitement, she felt 
a want within herself. She was unsure. She had felt that 
now, at last, in Gerald’s strong and violent love, she was 
living fully and finally. But when she compared herself with 
Ursula, already her soul was jealous, unsatisfied. She was not 
satisfied—she was never to be satisfied. 

What was she short of now? It was marriage—it was the 
wonderful stability of mariage. She did want it, let her 
say what she might. She had been lying. The old idea of 
marriage was right even now—marriage and the home. Yet 
her mouth gave a little grimace at the words. She thought of 
Gerald and Shortlands—marriage and the home! Ah well, 
let it rest! He meant a great deal to her—but—! Perhaps it 
was not in her to marry. She was one of life’s outcasts, one 
of the drifting lives that have no root. No, no—it could not 


FLITTING 431 


be so. She suddenly conjured up a rosy room, with herself 
in a beautiful gown, and a handsome man in evening dress 
who held her in his arms in the firelight, and kissed her. This 
picture she entitled “Home.” It would have done for the 
Royal Academy. | 

“Come with us to tea—do,” said Ursula, as they ran nearer 
to the cottage of Willey Green. 

“Thanks awfully—but I must go in—” said Gudrun. She 
wanted very much to go on with Ursula and Birkin. That 
seemed like life indeed to her. Yet a certain perversity would 
not let her. 

“Do come—yes, it would be so nice,” pleaded Ursula. 

“T’m awfully sorry—I should love to—but I can’t— 
really—”’ 

She descended from the car in trembling haste. 

“Can’t you really!” came Ursula’s regretful voice. 

“No, really I can’t,” responded Gudrun’s pathetic, chagrined 
words out of the dusk. | 

“All right, are you?” called Birkin. 

“Quite!” said Gudrun. ‘‘Good-night!” 

“Good-night,” they called. 

“Come whenever you like, we shall be glad,” called Birkin. 

“Thank you very much,” called Gudrun, in the strange, 
twanging voice of lonely chagrin that was very puzzling to 
him. She turned away to her cottage gate, and they drove 
on. But immediately she stood to watch them, as the car ran 
vague into the distance. And as she went up the path to 
her strange house, her heart was full of incomprehensible 
bitterness. 

In her parlour was a long-case clock, and inserted into its 
dial was a ruddy, round, slant-eyed, joyous-painted face, that 
wagged over with the most ridiculous ogle when the clock 
ticked, and back again with the same absurd glad-eye at the 
next tick. All the time the absurd smooth, brown-ruddy face 
gave her an obstrusive “glad-eye.” She stood for minutes, 
watching it, till a sort of maddened disgust overcame her, and 
she laughed at herself hollowly. And still it rocked, and gave 
her the glad-eye from one side, then from the other, from one 


432 WOMEN IN LOVE 


side, then from the other. Ah, how unhappy she was! In 
the midst of her most active happiness, ah, how unhappy she 
was! She glanced at the table. Gooseberry jam, and the 
same home-made cake with too much soda in it! Still, goose- 
berry jam was good, and one so rarely got it. 

All the evening she wanted to go to the Mill. But she coldly 
refused to allow herself. She went the next afternoon instead. 
She was happy to find Ursula alone. It was a lovely, intimate 
secluded atmosphere. They talked endlessly and delightedly. 
“Aren’t you fearfully happy here?” said Gudrun to her sister 
glancing at her own bright eyes in the mirror. She always 
envied, almost with resentment, the strange positive fulness 
that subsisted in the atmosphere around Ursula and Birkin. 

“How really beautifully this room is done,” she said aloud. 
“This hard plaited matting—what a lovely colour it is, the 
colour of cool light!” 

And it seemed to her perfect. 

“Ursula,” she said at length, in a voice of fisbbbiead and de- 
tachment, “did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested 
our going away all together at Christmas?” 

“Yes, he’s spoken to Rupert.” 

A deep flush dyed Gudrun’s cheek. She was stent a mo- 
ment, as if taken aback, and not knowing what to say. 

“But don’t you think,” she said at last, “it is amazingly 
cool!” 

Ursula laughed. 

“T like him for it,” she said. 

Gudrun was silent. It was evident that, whilst she was 
almost mortified by Gerald’s taking the liberty of making 
such a suggestion to Birkin, yet the idea itself attracted her 
strongly. 

“There’s a rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,” 
said Ursula, “so defiant, somehow! Oh, I think he’s very 
lovable.” 

Gudrun did not reply for some moments. She had still to 
get over the feeling of insult at the liberty taken with her 
freedom. 

“What did Rupert say—do you know?” she asked, 


FLITTING 433 


“He said it would be most awfully jolly,” said Ursula. 

Again Gudrun looked down, and was silent. 

“Don’t you think it would?” said Ursula, tentatively. She 
was never quite sure how many defences Gudrun was having 
round herself. 

Gudrun raised her face with difficulty and held it averted. 

“T think it might be awfully jolly, as you say,” she replied. 
“But don’t you think it was an unpardonable liberty to take 
—to talk of such things to Rupert—who after all—you see 
what I mean, Ursula—they might have been two men arrang- 
ing an outing with some little type they’d picked up. Oh, I 
think it’s unforgivable, quite!” She used the French word 
“ce ty ) e.”” 

Her eyes flashed, her soft face was flushed and sullen. 
Ursula looked on, rather frightened. frightened most of all 
because she thought Gudrun seemed rather common, really 
like a little type. But she had not the courage quite to think 
this—not right out. 

“Oh no,” she cried, stammering. “Oh no—not at all like 
that—oh no! No, I think it’s rather beautiful, the friend- 
ship between Rupert and Gerald. They just are simple—they 
say anything to each other, like brothers. 

Gudrun flushed deeper. She could not bear it that Gerald 
gave her away—even to Birkin. 

“But do you think even brothers have any right to ex- 
change confidences of that sort?” she asked, with deep anger. 

“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “There’s never anything said that 
isn’t perfectly straightforward. No, the thing that’s amazed 
me most in Gerald—how perfectly simple and direct he can 
be! And you know, it takes rather a big man. Most of them 
must be indirect, they are such cowards.” 

But Gudrun was still silent with anger. She wanted the 
absolute secrecy kept, with regard to her movements. 

“Won't you go?” said Ursula. “Do, we might all be so 
happy! There is something I love about Gerald—he’s much 
more lovable than I thought him. He’s free, Gudrun, he 
really is.” 


434 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Gudrun’s mouth was still closed, sullen and ugly. She 
opened it at length. 

“Do you know where he proposes to go?” she asked. 

“Yes—to the Tyrol, where he used to go when he was in 
Germany—a lovely place where students go, small and rough 
and lovely, for winter sport!” 

Through Gudrun’s mind went the angry thought—“they 
know everything.” 

“Ves,” she said aloud, “about forty atometnes from Inns- 
bruck, isn’t it?” 

“T don’t know exactly where—but it would be lovely, don’t 
you think, high in the perfect snow—?” 

“Very lovely!” said Gudrun, sarcastically. 

Ursula was put out. 

“Of course,” she said, “I think Gerald spoke to Rupert so 
that it shouldn’t seem like an outing with a type—” 

“T know, of course,” said Gudrun, “that he quite commonly 
does take up with that sort.” 

“Does he!” said Ursula. “Why how do you know?” 

“TI know of a model in Chelsea,” said Gudrun coldly. 

Now Ursula was silent. 

“Well,” she said at last, with a doubtful laugh, “I hope 
he has a good time with her.” At which Gudrun looked more 


glum. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
IN THE POMPADOUR 


CuristMas drew near, all four prepared for flight. Birkin 
and Ursula were busy packing their few personal things, mak- 
ing them ready to be sent off, to whatever country and what- 
ever place they might choose at last. Gudrun was very much 
excited. She loved to be on the wing. 

She and Gerald, being ready first, set off via London and 
Paris to Innsbruck, where they would meet Ursula and Birkin. 
In London they stayed one night. They went to the music- 
hall and afterwards to the Pompadour Café. 

Gudrun hated the Café, yet she always went back to it, as 
did most of the artists of her acquaintance. She loathed its 
atmosphere of petty vice and petty jealousy and petty art. 
Yet she always called in again, when she was in town. It was 
as if she dad to return to this small, slow, central whirlpool of 
disintegration and dissolution: just give it a look. 

She sat with Gerald drinking some sweetish liqueur, and 
staring with black, sullen looks at the various groups of people 
at the tables. She would greet nobody, but young men nodded 
to her frequently, with a kind of sneering familiarity. She 
cut them all. And it gave her pleasure to sit there, cheeks 

flushed, eyes black and sullen, seeing them all objectively, as 
_ put away from her, like creatures in some menagerie of apish 
_ degraded souls. God, what a foul crew they were! Her blood 
___ beat black and thick in her veins with rage and loathing. Yet 
| she must sit and watch, watch. One or two people came to 
| speak to her. From every side of the Café, eyes turned half 
furtively, half jeeringly at her, men loking over their shoulders, 
women under their hats. 

The old crowd was there, Carlyon in his corner with his 
pupils and his girl, Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum— 

435 


Ch Seen t 4 


436 WOMEN IN LOVE 


they were all there. Gudrun watched Gerald. She watched 
his eyes lmger a moment on Halliday, on Halliday’s party. 
These last were on the look-out—they nodded to him, he nod- 
ded again. They giggled and whispered among themselves. 
Gerald watched them with the steady twinkle in his eyes. They 
were urging the Pussum to something. 

She at last rose. She was wearing a curious dress of dark 
silk splashed and spattered with different colours, a curious 
motley effect. She was thinner, her eyes were perhaps hotter, 
more disintegrated. Otherwise she was just the same. Gerald 
watched her with the same steady twinkle in his eyes as she 
came across. She held out her thin brown hand to him. 

“How are you?” she said. 

He shook hands with her, but remained seated, and let her 
stand near him, against the table. She nodded blackly to Gud- 
run, whom she did not know to speak to, but well enough by 
sight and reputation. 

“T am very well,” said Gerald. “And you?” 

“Oh I’m all wight. What about Wupert?” 

“Rupert? He’s very well, too.” 

“Ves, I don’t mean that. What about him being married?” 

“Oh—yes, he is married.” — 

The Pussum’s eyes had a hot flash. 

“Oh, he’s weally bwought it off then, has he? When was he 
married?” | 

“A week or two ago.” 

“Weally! He’s never written.” 

“No.” 

“No. Don’t you think it’s too bad?” 

This last was in a tone of challenge. The Pussum let it be 
known by her tone, that she was aware of Gudrun’s listening. 

“T suppose he didn’t feel like it,”’ replied Gerald. 

“But why didn’t he?” pursued the Pussum. 

This was received in silence. There was an ugly, mocking 
persistence in the small, beautiful figure of the chorayes girl, 
as she stood near Gerald. 

“Are you staying in town long?” she asked. 

“To-night only.” 


ee 


IN THE POMPADOUR 437 


“Oh, only to-night. Are you coming over to speak to 
Julius?” 

“Not to-night.” 

“Oh very well. Ill tell him then.” Then came her touch 
of diablerie. ‘“You’re looking awf’lly fit.” 

“Yes—I feel it.” Gerald was quite calm and easy, a spark 
of satiric amusement in his eye. 

“Are you having a good time?” 

This was a direct blow for Gudrun, spoken in a level, tone- 
less voice of callous ease. 

“Yes,” he replied, quite colourlessly. 

“T’m awf'lly sorry you aren’t coming round to the flat. You 
aren’t very faithful to your fwiends.” 

“Not very,” he said. 

She nodded them both “Good-night,” and went back slowly 
to her own set. Gudrun watched her curious walk, stiff and 
jerking at the loins. They heard her level, toneless voice dis- 
tinctly. 

“He won’t come over;—he is otherwise engaged,” it said. 
There was more laughter and lowered voices and mockery at 
the table. 

“Is she a friend of yours?” said Gudrun, looking calmly at 
Gerald. 

“I’ve stayed at Halliday’s flat with Birkin,” he said, meeting 
her slow, calm eyes. And she knew that the Pussum was one 
of his mistresses—and he knew she knew. 

She looked round, and called for the waiter. She wanted an 
iced cocktail, of all things. This amused Gerald—he won- 
dered what was up. 

The Halliday party was tipsy, and malicious. They were 
talking out loudly about Birkin, ridiculing him on every point, 
particularly on his marriage. 

“Oh, don’t make me think of Birkin,” Halliday was squeal- 
ing. “He makes me perfectly sick. He is as bad as Jesus. 
‘Lord, what must I do to be saved!’ ” 

He giggled to himself tipsily. 

“Do you remember,” came the quick voice of the Russian, 
“the letters he used to send? ‘Desire is holy—’ ” 


438 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Oh yes!” cried Halliday. “Oh, how perfectly splendid. 
Why, I’ve got one in my pocket. I’m sure I have.” 

He took out various papers from his pocket book. 

‘“T’m sure ’ve—hic! Ok dear!—got one.” 

Gerald and Gudrun were watching absorbedly. 

“Oh yes, how perfectly—/ic/—splendid! Don’t make me 
laugh, Pussum, it gives me the hiccup. Hic!—” They all 
giggled. 

“What did he say in that one?”’ the Pussum asked, leaning 
forward, her dark, soft hair falling and swinging against her 
face. There was something curiously indecent, obscene about 
her small, longish, dark skull, particularly when the ears 
showed. 

“Wait—oh do wait! No-o, I won’t give it to you, I'll read 
it aloud. Ill read you the choice bits—ic/ Oh dear! Do 
you think if I drink water it would take off this hiccup? Hic/ 
Oh, I feel perfectly helpless.” 

“Tsn’t that the letter about uniting the dark and the light— 
and the Flux of Corruption?” asked Maxim, in his precise, 
quick voke. 

“T believe so,” said the Pussum. 

“Oh is it? Id forgotten—hic/—it was that one,” Halliday 
said, opening the letter. “Hic/ Oh yes. How perfectly splen- 
did! This is one of the best. ‘‘ “There is a phase in every 
race—’” he read in the sing-song, slow, distinct voice of a 
clergyman reading the Scriptures, ‘‘ ‘when the desire for de- 
struction overcomes every other desire. In the individual, this 
desire is ultimately a desire for destruction in the self’—hic—” 
he paused and looked up. 

“T hope he’s going ahead with the destruction ‘of himself,” 
said the quick voice of the Russian. Halliday giggled, and 
lolled his head back, vaguely. 

“There’s not much to destroy in him,” said the Pussum. : 
“He’s so thin already, there’s only a fag-end to start on.” 

“Oh, isn’t it beautiful! I love reading it! I believe it has 
cured my hiccup!” squealed Halliday. ‘Do let me go on. ‘It 
is a desire for the reduction-process in oneself, a reducing back 
to the origin, a return along the Flux of Corruption, to the 


IN THE POMPADOUR 439 


original rudimentary conditions of being—!’ Oh, but I do 
think it is wonderful. It almost supersedes the Bible—” 

“Yes—Flux of Corruption,” said the Russian, “I remember 
that phrase.” 

“Oh, he was always talking about Corruption,” said the 
Pussum. “He must be corrupt himself, to have it so much 
on his mind.” 

“Exactly!” said the Russian. 

“Do let me go on! Oh, this is a perfectly wonderful piece! 
But do listen to this. ‘And in the great retrogression, the 
reducing back of the created body of life, we get knowledge, 
and beyond knowledge, the phosphorescent ecstasy of acute 
sensation.’ Oh, I do think these phrases are too absurdly won- 
derful. Oh but don’t you think they are—they’re nearly as 
good as Jesus. ‘And if, Julius, you want this ecstasy of reduc- 
tion with the Pussum, you must go on till it is fulfilled. But 
surely there is in you also, somewhere, the living desire for 
positive creation, relationships in ultimate faith, when all this 
process of active corruption, with all its flowers of mud, is 
transcended, and more or less finished—’ I do wonder what 
the flowers of mud are. Pussum, you are a flower of mud.” 

“Thank you—and what are you?” 

“Oh, I’m another, surely, according to this letter! We're 
all flowers of mud—Fleurs—hic! du mal! It’s perfectly won- 
derful, Birkin harrowing Hell—harrowing the Pompadour— 
Hic!” 

“Go on—go on,” said Maxim. “What comes next? It’s 
really very interesting.” 

“TJ think it’s awful cheek to write like that,” said the 
Pussum. 

“Ves—yes, so do I,” said the Russian. “He is a megalo- 
maniac, of course, it is a form of religious mania. He thinks 
he is the Saviour of man—go on reading.” 

“Surely,” Halliday intoned, “ ‘surely goodness and mercy 
hath followed me all the days of my life—’” he broke off and 
giggled, Then he began again, intoning like a clergyman. 
‘Surely there will come an end in us to this desire—for the 
constant going apart,—this passion for putting asunder—every- 


440 WOMEN IN LOVE 


thing—ourselves, reducing ourselves part from part—reacting 
in intimacy only for destruction,—using sex as a great reducing 
agent, reducing the two great elements of male and female 
from their highly complex unity—reducing the old ideas, going 
back to the savages for our sensations,—always seeking to lose 
ourselves in some ultimate black sensation, mindless and in- 
finite—burning only with destructive fires, raging on with the 
hope of being burnt out utterly—’ ” 

“Y want to go,” said Gudrun to Gerald, as she signalled the 
waiter. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed. The 
strange effect of Birkin’s letter read aloud in a perfect clerical 
sing-song, clear and resonant, phrase by phrase, made the 
blood mount into her head as if she were mad. 

She rose, whilst Gerald was paying the bill, and walked over 
to Halliday’s table. They all glanced up at her. 

“Excuse me,” she said. “Is that a genuine letter you are 
reading?” 

“Oh yes,” said Halliday. ‘Quite genuine.” 

“May I see?” 

Smiling foolishly he handed it to her, as if hypnotised. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

And she turned and walked out of the Café with the letter, 
all down the brilliant room, between the tables, in her meas- 
ured fashion. It was some moments before anybody realised 
what was happening. 

From Halliday’s table came half articulate cries, then some- 
body booed, then all the far end of the place began booing 
after Gudrun’s retreating form. She was fashionably dressed 
in blackish-green and silver, her hat was brilliant green, like 
the sheen on an insect, but the brim was soft dark green, a 
falling edge with fine silver, her coat was dark green, bril- 
liantly glossy, with a high collar of grey fur, and great fur 
cuffs, the edge of her dress showed silver and black velvet, her 
stockings and shoes were silver grey. She moved with slow, 
fashionable indifference to the door. The porter opened obse- 
quiously for her, and, at her nod, hurried to the edge of the 
pavement and whistled for a taxi. The two lights of a vehicle 
almost immediately curved round towards her, like two eyes. 


IN THE POMPADOUR 441 


Gerald had followed in wonder, amid all the booing, not 
having caught her misdeed. He heard the Pussum’s voice 
saying: 

“Go and get it back from her. I never heard of such a thing! 
Go and get it back from her. Tell Gerald Crich—there he 
goes—go and make him give it up.” 

Gudrun stood at the door of the taxi, which the man held 
open for her. 

“To the hotel?” she asked, as Gerald came out, hurriedly. 

“Where you like,” he answered. 

“Right?” she said. Then to the driver: “Wagstaff’s—Barton 
Street.” ‘ 

The driver bowed his head, and put down the flag. 

Gudrun entered the taxi, with the deliberate cold movement 
of a woman who is well-dressed and contemptuous in her soul. 
Yet she was frozen with overwrought feelings. Gerald fol- 
lowed her. : 

“You’ve forgotten the man,” she said coolly, with a slight 
nod of her hat. Gerald gave the porter a shilling. The man 
saluted. They were in motion. 

“What was all the row about?” asked Gerald, in wondering 
excitement. 

“I walked away with Birkin’s letter,” she said, and he saw 
the crushed paper in her hand. | 

His eyes glittered with satisfaction. 

“Ah!” he said. “Splendid! A set of jackasses!” 

“T could have killed them!” she cried in passion. “Dogs/— 
they are dogs! Why is Rupert such a fool as to write such 
letters to them? Why does he give himself away to such 
canaille? It’s a thing that cannot be borne.” 

Gerald wondered over her strange passion. 

And she could not rest any longer in London. They must 
go by the morning train from Charing Cross. As they drew 
over the bridge, in the train, having glimpses of the river be- 
tween the great iron girders, she cried: 

“T feel I could never see this foul town again—I couldn’t 
bear to come back to it.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 
CONTINENTAL 


UrsvLa went on in an unreal suspense, the last weeks before 
going away. She was not herself—she was not anything. She 
was something that is going to be—soon—soon—very soon. 
But as yet, she was only imminent. 

She went to see her parents. It was a rather stiff, sad meet- 
ing, more like a verification of separateness than a reunion. 
But they were all vague and indefinite with one another, stif- 
fened in the fate that moved them apart. 

She did not really come to until she was on the ship cross- 
ing from Dover to Ostend. Dimly she had come down to 
London with Birkin, London had been a vagueness, so had the 
train-journey to Dover. It was all like a sleep, 

And now, at last, as she stood in the stern of the shin in 
a pitch-dark, rather blowy night, feeling the motion of the 
sea, and watching the small, rather desolate little lights that 
twinkled on the shores of England, as on the shores of no- 
where, watched them sinking smaller and smaller on the pro- 
found and living darkness, she felt her soul stirring to awake 
from its anzsthetic sleep. 

“Let us go forward, shall we?” said Birkin. He wanted to 
be at the tip of their projection. So they left off looking at 
the faint sparks that glimmered out of nowhere, in the far 
distance, called England, and turned their faces to the un- 
fathomed night in front. 

They went right to the bow of the softly plunging vessel. 
In the complete obscurity, Birkin found a comparatively shel- 
tered nook, where a great rope was coiled up. It was quite 
near the very point of the ship, near the black, unpierced 
space ahead. Here they sat down, folded together, folded 
round with the same rug, creeping in nearer and ever nearer 
to one another, till it seemed they had crept right into each 

442 


CONTINENTAL 443 


other, and become one substance. It was very cold, and the 
darkness was palpable. 

One of the ship’s crew came along the deck, dark as the 
darkness, not really visible. They then made out the faintest 
pallor of his face. He felt their presence, and stopped, unsure 
—then bent forward. When his face was near them, he saw 
the faint pallor of their faces. Then he withdrew like a 
phantom. And they watched him without making any sound. 

They seemed to fall away into the profound darkness. 
There was no sky, no earth, only one unbroken darkness, into 
which, with a soft, sleeping motion, they seemed to fall like 
one closed seed of life falling through dark, fathomless space. 

They had forgotten where they were, forgotten all that was 
and all that had been, conscious only in their heart, and there 
conscious only of this pure trajectory through the surpassing 
darkness. ‘The ship’s prow cleaved on, with a faint noise of 
cleavage, into the complete night, without knowing, without 
seeing, only surging on. 

In Ursula the sense of the unrealised world ahead triumphed 
over everything. In the midst of this profound darkness, there 
seemed to glow on her heart the effulgence of a paradise un- 
known and unrealised. Her heart was full of the most won- 
derful light, golden like honey of darkness, sweet like the 
warmth of day, a light which was not shed on the world, only 
on the unknown paradise towards which she was going, a 
sweetness of habitation, a delight of living quite unknown, but 
hers infallibly. In her transport she lifted her face suddenly 
to him, and he touched it with his lips. So cold, so fresh, so 
sea-clear her face was, it was like kissing a flower that grows 
near the surf. | 

But he did not know the ecstasy of bliss in fore-knowledge 
that she knew. To him, the wonder of this transit was over- 
whelming. He was falling through a gulf of infinite darkness, 
like a meteorite plunging across the chasm between the worlds. 
The world was torn in two, and he was plunging like an unlit 
star through the ineffable rift. What was beyond was not yet 
for him. He was overcome by the trajectory. 

In a trance he lay enfolding Ursula round about. His face 


444 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was against her fine, fragile hair, he breathed its fragrance 
with the sea and the profound night. And his soul was at 
peace; yielded, as he fell into the unknown. This was the 
first time that an utter and absolute peace had entered his 
heart, now, in this final transit out of life. 

When there came some stir on the deck, they roused. They 
stood up. How stiff and cramped they were, in the night- 
time! And yet the paradisal glow on her heart, and the un- 
utterable peace of darkness in his, this was the all-in-all. 

They stood up and looked ahead. Low lights were seen 
down the darkness. This was the world again. It was not 
the bliss of her heart, nor the peace of his. It was the super- 
ficial unreal world of fact. Yet not quite the old world. For 
the peace and the bliss in their hearts was enduring. 

Strange, and desolate above all things, like disembarking 
from the Styx into the desolated underworld, was this landing 
at night. There was the raw, half-lighted, covered-in vast- 
ness of the dark place, boarded and hollow under-foot, with 
only desolation everywhere. Ursula had caught sight of the 
big, pallid, mystic letters “OSTEND,” standing in the dark- 
ness. Everybody was hurrying with a blind, insect-like intent- 
ness through the dark grey air, porters were calling in un- 
English English, then trotting with heavy bags, their colour- 
less blouses looking ghostly as they disappeared; Ursula stood 
at a long, low, zinc-covered barrier, along with hundreds of 
other spectral people, and all the way down the vast, raw dark- 
ness was this low stretch of open bags and spectral people, 
whilst, on the other side of the barrier, pallid officials in 
peaked caps and moustaches were. turning the underclothing in. 
the bags, then scrawling a chalk-mark. 

It was done. Birkin snapped the hand bags, off they went, 
the porter coming behind. They were through a great door- 
way, and in the open night again—ah, a railway platform! 
Voices were still calling in inhuman agitation through the dark- 
grey, air, spectres were running along the darkness between 
the train. 

“Koln—Berlin—” Ursula made out on the boards hung 
on the high train on one side. 


CONTINENTAL 445 


“Here we are,” said Birkin. And on her side she saw: 
“Elsass—Lothringen—Luxembourg, Metz—Basle.” 

“That was it, Basle!” 

The porter came up. 

“A Bale—deuxiéme classe?—voila.” And he clambered into 
the high train. They followed. The compartments were al- 
ready some of them taken. But many were dim and empty. 
The luggage was stowed, the porter was tipped. 

“Nous avons encore—?” said Birkin, looking at his watch 
and at the porter. 

“Encore une demi-heure.” With which, in his blue blouse, 
he disappeared. He was ugly and insolent. 

“Come,” said Birkin. “It is cold. Let us eat.” 

There was a coffee-wagon on the platform. They drank 
hot, watery coffee, and ate the long rolls, split, with ham be- 
tween, which were such a wide bite, that it almost dislocated 
Ursula’s jaw; and they walked beside the high trains. It was 
all so strange, so extremely desolate, like the underworld, grey, 
grey, dirt grey, desolate, forlorn, nowhere—grey, dreary no- 
where. 

At last they were moving through the night. In the dark- 
ness Ursula made out the flat fields, the wet flat dreary dark- 
ness of the Continent. They pulled up surprisingly soon— 
Bruges! Then on through the level darkness, with glimpses 
of sleeping farms and thin poplar trees and deserted high- 
roads. She sat dismayed, hand in hand with Birkin. He 
pale, immobile like a revenant himself, lookeg sometimes out 
of the window, sometimes closed his eyes. Then his eyes 
opened again, dark as the darkness outside. 

A flash of a few lights on the darkness—Ghent station! A 
few more spectres moving outside on the platiorm—then the 
bell—then motion again through the level darkness. Ursula 
saw a man with a lantern come out of a farm by the railway, 
and cross to the dark farm-buildings. She thought of the 
Marsh, the old, intimate farm-life at Cossethay. My God, 
how far was she projected from her childhood, how far was 
she still to go! In one life-time one travelled through zons. 
The great chasm of memory from her childhood in the intimate 


446 WOMEN IN LOVE 


country surroundings of Cossethay and the Marsh Farm—she 
remembered the servant Tilly, who used to give her bread and 
butter sprinkled with brown sugar, in the old living-room where 
the grandfather clock had two pink roses in a basket painted 
above the figures on the face—and now when she was traveling 
into the uaknown with Birkin, an utter stranger—was so great, 
that it seemed she had no identity, that the child she had been, 
playing in Cossethay churchyard, was a little creature of his- 
tory, not really herself. 

They were at Brussels—half an hour for breakfast. They 
got down. On the great station clock it said six o’clock. They 
had coffee and rolls and honey in the vast desert refreshment 
room, so dreary, always so dreary, dirty, so spacious, such 
desolation of space. But she washed her face and hands in 
hot water, and combed her hair—that was a blessing. 

Soon they were in the train again and moving on. The 
greyness of dawn began. There were several people in the 
compartment, large florid Belgian business-men with long 
brown beards, talking incessantly in an ugly French she was 
too tired to follow. 

It seemed the train ran by degrees out of the darkness into 
a faint light, then beat after beat into the day. Ah, how 
weary it was! Faintly, the trees showed, like shadows. Then 
a house, white, had a curious distinctness. How was it? Then 
she saw a village—there were always houses passing. 

This was an old world she was still journeying through, win- 
ter-heavy and dreary. ‘There was plough-land and pasture, 
and copses of bare trees, copses of bushes, and homesteads 
naked and work-bare. No new earth had come to pass. 

She looked at Birkin’s face. It was white and still and 
eternal, too eternal. She linked her fingers imploringly in 
his, under the cover of her rug. His fingers responded, his 
eyes looked back at her. How dark, like a night, his eyes 
were, like another world beyond! Oh, if he were the world 
as well, if only the world were he! If only he could call a 
world into being, that should be their own world! 

The Belgians left, the train ran on, through Luxembourg, 


CONTINENTAL 447 


through Alsace-Lorraine, through Metz. But she was blind, 
she could see no more. Her soul did not look out. 

They came at last to Basle, to the hotel. It was all a 
drifting trance, from which she never came to. They went 
out in the morning, before the train departed. She saw the 
street, the river, she stood on the bridge.. But it all meant 
nothing. She remembered some shops—one full of pictures, 
one with orange velvet and ermine. But what did these sig- 
nify ?—nothing. 

She was not at ease till they were in the train again. Then 
she was relieved. So long as they were moving onwards, she 
was satisfied. ‘They came to Zirich, then, before very long, 
ran under the mountains, that were deep in snow. At last she 
was drawing near. This was the other world now. 

Innsbruck was wonderful, deep in snow, and evening. They 
drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so 
hot and stifling. And the hotel, with the golden light glowing 
under the porch, seemed like a home. 

They laughed with pleasure when they were in the hall. 
The place seemed full and busy. 

“Do you know if Mr. and Mrs. Crich—English—from Paris, 
have arrived?” Birkin asked in German. 

The porter reflected a moment, and was just going to an- 
swer, when Ursula caught sight of Gudrun, sauntering down 
the stairs, wearing her dark glossy coat, with grey fur. 

“Gudrun! Gudrun!” she called, waving up the well of the 
staircase. “Shu-hu!” 

Gudrun looked over the rail, and immediately lost her saun- 
tering, diffident air. Her eyes flashed. 

“Really—Ursula!” she cried. And she began to move 
downstairs as Ursula ran up. They met at a turn and kissed 
with laughter and exclamations inarticulate and stirring. 

“But!” cried Gudrun, mortified. “We thought it was fo- 
morrow you were coming! I wanted to come to the station.” 

“No, we’ve come to-day!” cried Ursula. “Isn’t it lovely 
here!” 

“Adorable!” said Gudrun. “Gerald’s just gone out to get 
something. Ursula, aren’t you fearfully tired?” 


448 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“No, not so very. But I look a filthy sight, don’t I?” 

“No, you don’t. You look almost perfectly fresh. I like 
that fur cap immensely!” She glanced over Ursula, who wore 
a big soft coat with a collar of deep, soft, blond fur, and a soft 
blond cap of fur. 

“And you!” cried Ursula. “What do you think you look 
like!” 

Gudrun assumed an unconcerned, expressionless face. 

“Do you like it?” she said. 

“It’s very fine!” cried Ursula, perhaps with a touch of 
satire. 

“Go up—or come down,” said Birkin. For there the sisters 
stood, Gudrun with her hand on Ursula’s arm, on the turn of 
the stairs half way to the first landing, blocking the way, and 
affording full entertainment to the whole of the hall below, 
from the door porter to the plump Jew in black clothes. 

The twe young women slowly mounted, followed by Birkin 
and the waiter. 

“First floor?” asked Gudrun, looking back over her shoulder. 

“Second Madam—the lift!” the porter replied. And he 
darted to the elevator to forestall the two women. But they 
ignored him, as, chattering without heed, they set to mount 
the second flight. Rather chagrined, the porter followed. 

It was curious, the delight of the sisters in each other, at 
this meeting. It was as if they met in exile, and united their 
solitary forces against all the world. Birkin looked on with 
some mistrust and wonder. 

When they had bathed and changed, Gerald came in. He 
looked shining like the sun on frost. 

“Go with Gerald and smoke,” said Ursula to Birkin. “Gud- 
run and I want to talk.” 

Then the sisters sat in Gudrun’s bedroom, and talked 
clothes, and experiences. Gudrun told Ursula the experience 
of the Birkin letter in the café. Ursula was shocked and 
frightened. 

“Where is the letter?” she asked. 

“T kept it,’’ said Gudrun. 

“You'll give it me, won’t you?” she said. 


: 


- 
| 
‘ 
: 


_ 


SS 


CONTINENTAL 449 


But Gudrun was silent for some moments, before she re- 
plied: 

“Do you really want it, Ursula?” 

“T want to read it,” said Ursula. 

“Certainly,” said Gudrun. 

Even now, she could not admit, to Ursula, that she wanted 
to keep it, as a memento, or a symbol. But Ursula knew, 
and was not pleased. So the subject was switched off. 

“What did you do in Paris?” asked Ursula. 

“Oh,” said Gudrun laconically—“the usual things. We had 
a fine party one night in Fanny Bath’s studio.” 

“Did you? And you and Gerald were there! Who else? 
Tell me about it.” 

“Well,” said Gudrun. “There’s nothing particular to tell. 
You know Fanny is frightfully in love with that painter, Billy 
Macfarlane. He was there—so Fanny spared nothing, she 
spent very freely. It was really remarkable! Of course, 
everybody got fearfully drunk—but in an interesting way, not 
like that filthy London crowd. The fact is these were all 
people that matter, which makes all the difference. There 
was a Roumanian,a fine chap. He got completely drunk, and 
climbed to the top of a high studio ladder, and gave the most 
marvellous address, really, Ursula, it was wonderful! He 
began in French—La vie, c’est une affaire d’Ames imperiales— 
in a most beautiful voice—he was a fine-looking chap—but 
he had got into Roumanian before he had finished, and not a 
soul understood. But Donald Gilchrist was worked to a 
frenzy. He dashed his glass to the ground, and declared, by 
God, he was glad he had been born, by God, it was a miracle 
to be alive. And do you know, Ursula, so it was—” Gudrun 
laughed rather hollowly. 

“But how was Gerald among them all?” asked Ursula. 

“Gerald! Oh, my word, he came out like a dandelion in the 
sun! He’s a whole saturnalia in himself, once he is roused. 
I shouldn’t like to say whose waist his arm did not go round. 
Really, Ursula, he seems to reap the women like a harvest. 
There wasn’t one that would have resisted him. It was too 
amazing! Can you understand it?” 


450 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Ursula reflected, and a dancing light came into her eyes. 

“Yes,” she said. “I can. He is such a whole- iy 

“Whole-hogger! I should think so!” exclaimed Gudrun. 
“But it is true, Ursula, every woman in the room was ready 
to surrender to him. Chanticleer isn’t in it—even Fanny 
Bath, who is genuinely in love with Billy Macfarlane! I 
never was more amazed in my life! And you know, after- 
wards—I felt I was a whole roomful of women. I was no 
more myself to him, than I was Queen Victoria. I was a 
whole roomful of women at once. It was most astounding! 
But my eye, I’d caught a Sultan that time—” 

Gudrun’s eyes were flashing, her cheek was hot, she looked 
strange, exotic, satiric. Ursula was fascinated at once—and 
yet uneasy. 

They had to get ready for dinner. Gudrun came down in 
a daring gown of vivid green silk and tissue of gold, with 
green velvet bodice and a strange black-and-white band round 
her hair. She was really brilliantly beautiful and everybody 
noticed her. Gerald was in that full-blooded, gleaming state 
when he was most handsome. Birkin watched them with quick, 
laughing, half-sinister eyes, Ursula quite lost her head. There 
seemed a spell, almost a blinding spell, cast round their table, 
as if they were lighted up more strongly than the rest of the 
dining-room. 

“Don’t you love to be in this place?” cried Gudrun. “Isn’t 
the snow wonderful! Do you notice how it exalts everything? 
It is simply marvellous. One really does feel uibermenschlich 
—more than human.” 

“One does,” cried Ursula. “But isn’t that partly the being 
out of England?” 

“Oh, of course,” cried Gudrun. “One could never feel like 
this in England, for the simple reason that the damper is mever 
lifted off one, there. It is quite impossible really to let go, in 
England, of that I am assured.” 

And she turned again to the food she was eating. She was 
fluttering with vivid intensity. 

“Tt’s quite true,” said Gerald, “it never is quite the same in 
England. But perhaps we don’t want it to be—perhaps it’s 


' CONTINENTAL 4st 


like bringing the light a little too near the powder-magazine, 
to let go altogether in England. One is afraid what might 
happen, if everybody else let go.” 

“My God!” cried Gudrun. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful, 
if all England did suddenly go off like a display of fireworks.” 

“Tt couldn’t,” said Ursula. ‘They are all too damp, the 
powder is damp in them.” 

“T’m not so sure of that,” said Gerald. 

“Nor I,” said Birkin. ‘‘When the English really begin to 
go off, ex masse, it'll be time to shut your ears and run.” 

“They never will,” said Ursula. 

“We'll see,” he replied. 

“Tsn’t it marvellous,” said Gudrun, “how thankful one can 
be, to be out of one’s country. I cannot believe myself, I am 
so transported, the moment I set foot on a foreign shore. I 
say to myself ‘Here steps a new creature into life.’ ” 

“Don’t be too hard on poor old England,” said Gerald. 
“Though we curse it, we love it really.” 

To Ursula, there seemed a fund of cynicism in these words. 

“We may,” said Birkin. “But it’s a damnably uncom- 
fortable love: like a love for an aged parent who suffers hor- 
ribly from a complication of diseases, for which there is no 
hope.” 

Gudrun looked at him with dilated dark eyes. 

“You think there is no hope?” she asked, in her pertinent 
fashion. 

But Birkin backed away. He would not answer such a 
question. 

“Any hope of England’s becoming real? God knows. It’s 
a great actual unreality now, an aggregation into unreality, 
It might be real, if there were no Englishmen.” 

“You think the English will have to disappear?” persisted 
‘ Gudrun. It was strange, her pointed interest in his answer. 
It might have been her own fate she was inquiring after. Her 
dark, dilated eyes rested on Birkin, as if she could conjure the 
truth of the future out of him, as out of some instrument of 
divination. 

He was pale. Then, reluctantly, he answered: 


452 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Well—what else is in front of them, but disappearance? 
They’ve got to disappear sae: their own special brand of 
Englishness, anyhow.” 

- Gudrun watched him as if in a hypnotic state, her eyes wide 
and fixed on him. 

“But in what way do you mean, _ disappear ?—” she per- 
sisted. 

“Yes, do you mean a change of heart?” put in Gerald. 

“TI don’t mean anything, why should I?” said Birkin. “I’m 
an Englishman, and I’ve paid the price of it. I can’t talk 
about England—I can only speak for myself.” 

“Yes,” said Gudrun slowly, “you love England immensely, 
immensely, Rupert.” 

“And leave her,” he replied. 

“No, not for good. You'll come back,” said Gerald, nodding 
sagely. 

“They say the lice crawl off a dying body,” said Birkin, 
with a glare of bitterness. “So I leave England.” 

“Ah, but you’ll come back,” said Gudrun, with a sardonic 
smile. 

“Tant pis pour moi,” he replied. 

“Isn’t he angry with his mother country!” laughed Gerald, 
amused, 

“Ah, a patriot!” said Gear with something like a sneer. 

Birkin refused to answer any more. 

Gudrun watched him still for a few seconds. ‘Then she 
turned away. It was finished, her spell of divination in him. 
She felt already purely cynical. She looked at Gerald. He 
was wonderful like a piece of radium to her. She felt she 
could consume herself and know all, by means of this fatal, 
living metal. She smiled to herself at her fancy. And what 
would she do with herself, when she had destroyed herself? 
For if spirit, if integral being is destructible, Matter is inde- 
structible. 

He was looking bright and abstracted, puzzled, for the mo- 
ment. She stretched out her beautiful arm, with its fluff of 
green tulle, and touched his chin with her subtle, artist’s 
fingers. 


CONTINENTAL 453 


“What are they then?” she asked, with a strange, knowing 
smile. 

“What?” he replied, his eyes suddenly dilating wtih wonder. 

“Your thoughts.” 

Gerald looked like a man coming awake. 

“T think I had none,” he said. 

“Really!” she said, with grave laughter in her voice. 

And to Birkin it was as if she killed Gerald, with that touch. 

“Ah but,” cried Gudrun, “let us drink to Britannia—let us 


DR ivihh. ty. Britannia.” 


It seemed there was wild despair in her voice. Gerald 
laughed, and filled the glasses. 

“T think Rupert means,” he said, “that nationally all Eng- 
lishmen must die, so that they can exist individually and—” 

“Super-nationally—” put in Gudrun, with a slight ironic 
grimace, raising her glass. © 

The next day, they descended at the tiny railway station 
of Hohenhausen, at the end of the tiny valley railway. It 
was show everywhere, a white, perfect cradle of snow, new 
and frozen, sweeping up on either side, black crags, and white 
sweeps of silver towards the blue pale heavens. 

As they stepped out on the naked platform, with only snow 
around and above, Gudrun shrank as if it chilled her heart. 

“My God, Jerry,” she said, turning to Gerald with sudden 
intimacy, “you’ve done it now.” 

“What?” 

She made a faint gesture, indicating the world on either 


_ hand. 


“Look at it!” 
She seemed afraid to go on. He laughed. 
They were in the heart of the mountains. From high above, 


on either side, swept down the white fold of snow, so that one 
_ seemed small and tiny in a valley of pure concrete heaven, all 
strangely radiant and changeless and silent. 

__ “It makes one feel so small and alone,” said Ursula, turn- 


ing to Birkin and laying her hand on his arm. 
“You're not sorry you’ve come, are you?” said Gerald to 


Gudrun. 


454 WOMEN IN LOVE 


She looked doubtful. They went out of the station between 
banks of snow. 

“Ah,” said Gerald, sniffing the air in elation, “this is per- 
fect. There’s our sledge. We'll walk a bit—we'll run up 
the road.” 

Gudrun, always doubtful, dropped her heavy coat on the 
sledge, as he did his, and they set off. Suddenly she threw 
up her head and set off scudding along the road of snow, 
pulling her cap down over her ears. Her blue, bright dress 
fluttered in the wind, her thick scarlet stockings were bril- 
liant above the whiteness. Gerald watched her: she seemed 
to be rushing towards her fate, and leaving him behind. He 
let her get some distance, then, loosening his limbs, he went 
after her. 4 ae ae 

Everywhere was deep and silent snow. Great snow-eaves 
weighed down the broad-roofed Tyrolese houses, that were 
sunk to the window-sashes in snow. Peasant-women, full- 
skirted, wearing each a cross-over shawl, and thick snow- 
boots, turned in the way to look at the soft, determined girl 
running with such heavy fleetness from the man, who was 
overtaking her, but not gaining any power over her. 

They passed the inn with its painted shutters and balcony, 
a few cottages, half buried in the snow; then the snow-buried 
silent saw-mill by the roofed bridge, which crossed the hidden 
stream, over which they ran into the very depth of the un- 
touched sheets of snow. It was a silence and a sheer white- 
ness exhilarating to madness. But the perfect silence was 
most terrifying, isolating the soul, surrounding the heart with 
frozen air. 

“It’s a marvellous place, for all that,’”’ said Gudrun, looking 
into his eyes with a strange, meaning look. His soul leapt. 

“Good,” he said. 

A fierce electric energy seemed to flow over all his limbs, 
his muscles were surcharged, his hands felt hard with strength. 
They walked along rapidly up the snow-road, that was marked 
by withered branches of trees stuck in at intervals. He and 
she were separate, like opposite poles of one fierce energy. But 


CONTINENTAL 455, 


they left powerful enough to leap over the confines of life into 
the forbidden places, and back again. 

Birkin and Ursula were running along also, over the snow. 
He had disposed of the luggage, and they had a little start 
of the sledges. Ursula was excited and happy, but she kept 
turning suddenly to catch hold of Birkin’s arm, to make sure 
of him. 

“This is something I never expected,” she said. “It is a 
different world, here.” 

They went on into a snow meadow. There they were over- 
taken by the sledge, that came tinkling through the silence. It 
was another mile before they came upon Gudrun and Gerald 
on the steep up-climb, beside the pink, half-buried shrine. 

Then they passed into a gulley, where were walls of black 
rock and a river filled with snow, and a still blue sky above. 
Through a covered bridge they went, drumming roughly over 
the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then slowly up 
and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver cracking his 
long whip as he walked beside, and calling his strange wild 
hue-hue! the walls of rock passing slowly by, till they emerged 
again between slopes and masses of snow. Up and up, grad- 
ually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the after- 
noon, silenced by the imminence of the mountains, the lu- 

- minous, dazing sides of snow that rose above them and fell 
away beneath. 

They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow, 

_ where stood the last peaks of snow like the heart petals of 
an open rose. In the midst of the last deserted valleys of 
heaven stood a lonely building with brown wooden walls and 

_ ‘white heavy roof, deep and deserted in the waste of snow, 

_ like a dream. It stood like a rock that had rolled down from 
the last steep slopes, a rock that had taken the form of a 

_ house, and was now half-buried. It was unbelievable that 

- one could live there uncrushed by all this terrible waste of 

_ whiteness and silence and clear, upper, ringing cold. 

Yet the sledges ran up in fine style, people came to the door 

laughing and excited, the floor of the hostel rang hollow, the 

_ passage was wet with snow, it was a real, warm interior. 


456 WOMEN IN LOVE 


The new-comers tramped up the bare wooden stairs, follow- 
ing the serving woman. Gudrun and Gerald took the first 
bedroom. In a moment they found themselves alone in a bare, 
smallish, clozse-shut room that was all of golden-coloured 
wood, floor, walls, ceiling, door, all of the same warm gold 
panelling of oiled pine. There was a window opposite the 
door, but low down, because the roof sloped. Under the slope 
of the ceiling were the table with wash-hand bow! and jug, 
and across, another table with mirror. On either side the door 
were two beds piled high with an enormous blue-checked over- 
bolster, enormous. 

This was all—no cupboard, none of the amenities of life. 
Here they were shut up together in this cell of golden-coloured 
wood, with two blue checked beds. They looked at each other - 
and laughed, frightened by this naked nearness of isolation. 

A man knocked and came in with the luggage. He was a 
sturdy fellow with flattish cheek-bones, rather pale, and with 
coarse fair moustache. Gudrun watched him put down the 
bags, in silence, then tramp heavily out. 

“Tt isn’t too rough, is it?” Gerald asked. 

The bedroom was not very warm, and she shivered slightly. 

“Tt is wonderful,” she equivocated. “Look at the colour of 
this panelling—it’s wonderful, like being inside a nut.” 

He was standing watching her, feeling his short-cut mous- 
tache, leaning back slightly and watching her with his keen, 
undaunted eyes, dominated by the constant passion, that was 
like a doom upon him. | 

She went and crouched down in front of the window, 
curious. 

“Oh, but this—!” she cried involuntarily, almost in pain. 

In front was a valley shut in under the sky, the last huge 
slopes of snow and black rock, and at the end, like the navel 
of the earth, a white-folded wall, and two peaks glimmering 
in the late light. Straight in front ran the cradle of silent 
snow, between the great slopes that were friaged with a little 
roughness of pine-trees, like hair, round the base. But the 
cradle of snow ran on to the eternal closing-in, where the walls 
of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the mountain peaks 


CONTINENTAL 457 


above were in heaven immediate. This was the centre, the 
knot, the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the 
skies, pure, unapproachable, impassable. 

It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture. She crouched in 
front of the window, clenching her face in her hands, in a sort 
of trance. At last she had arrived, she had reached her place. 
Here at last she folded her venture and settled down like a 
crystal in the navel of snow, and was gone. 

Gerald bent above her and was looking out over her shoul- 
der. Already he felt he was alone. She was gone. She was 
completely gone, and there was icy vapour round his heart. 
He saw the blind valley, the great cul-de-sac of snow and moun- 
tain peaks, under the heaven. And there was no way out. 
The terrible silence and cold and the glamorous whiteness of 
the dusk wrapped him round, and she remained crouching 
before the window, as at a shrine, a shadow. 

“Do you like it?” he asked, in a voice that sounded detached 
and foreign. At least she might acknowledge he was with her. 
But she only averted her soft, mute face a little from his gaze. 
And he knew that there were tears in her eyes, her own tears, 
tears of her strange religion, that put him to nought. 

Quite suddenly, he put his hand under her chin and lifted 
up her face to him. Her dark blue eyes, in their wetness of 
tears, dilated as if she was startled in her very soul. They 
looked at him through their tears in terror, and a little horror. 
His light blue eyes were keen, small-pupilled and unnatural in 
their vision. Her lips parted, as she breathed with difficulty. 

The passion came up in him, stroke after stroke, like the 
ringing of a bronze bell, so strong and unflawed and indom- 
itable. His knees tightened to bronze as he hung above her 
soft face, whose lips parted and whose eyes dilated in a 
strange violation. In the grasp of his hand her chin was unut- 
terably soft and silken. He felt strong as winter, his hands 
were living metal, invincible and not to be turned aside. His 
heart rang like a bell clanging inside him. 

_». He took her up in his arms. She was soft and inert, mo- 
_ tionless. All the while her eyes, in which the tears had not 
yet dried, were dilated as if in a kind of swoon of fascination 


458 WOMEN IN LOVE 


and helplessness. He was super-humanly strong, and unflawed, 
as if invested with supernatural force. 

He lifted her close and folded her against him. Her soft- 
ness, her inert, relaxed weight lay against his own surcharged, 
bronze-like limbs in a heaviness of desirability that would de- 
stroy him, if he were not fulfilled. She moved convulsively, 
recoiling away from him. His heart went up like a flame of 
ice, he closed over her like steel. He would destroy her rather 
than be denied. 

But the overweening power of his body was too much for 
her. She relaxed again, and lay loose and soft, panting in a 
little delirium. And to him, she was so sweet, she was such 
bliss of release, that he would have suffered a whole eternity 
of torture rather than forego one second of this pang of un- 
surpassable bliss. 

“My God,” he said to her, his face drawn and strange, 
transfigured, “what next?” 

She lay perfectly still, with a still, child-like face and dark 
eyes, looking at him. She was lost, fallen right away. 

“T shall always love you,” he said, looking at her. 

But she did not hear. She lay, looking at him as at some- 
thing she could never understand, never: as a child looks at 
a grown-up person, without hope of understanding, only sub- 
mitting. 

He kissed her, kissed her eyes shut, so that she could not 
look any more. He wanted something now, some recognition, 
some sign, some admission. But she only lay silent and child- 
like and remote, like a child that is overcome and cannot un- 
derstand, only feels lost. He kissed her again, giving up: 

“Shall we go down and have coffee and Kuchen?” he asked. 

The twilight was falling slate-blue at the window. She 
closed her eyes, closed away the monotonous level of dead 
wonder, and opened them again to the every-day world. 

“Yes,” she said briefly, regaining her will with a click. She 
went again to the window. Blue evening had fallen over the 
cradle of snow and over the great pallid slopes. But in the 
heaven the peaks of snow were rosy, glistening like trans- 
cendent, radiant spikes of blossom in the heavenly upper- 
world, so lovely and beyond. : 


CONTINENTAL 459 


Gudrun saw all their loveliness, she knew how immortally 
beautiful they were, great pistils of rose-coloured, snow-fed 
fire in the blue twilight of the heaven. She could see it, she 
knew it, but she was not of it. She was divorced, debarred, a 
soul shut out. 

With a last look of remorse, she turned away, and was doing 
her hair. He had unstrapped the luggage, and was waiting, 
watching her. She knew he was watching her. It made her 
a little hasty and feverish in her precipitation. 

_ They went downstairs, both with a strange other-world look 
_ on their faces, and with a glow in their eyes. They saw Birkin 
and Ursula sitting at the long table in a corner, waiting for 
them. 

: “How good and simple they look together,” Gudrun thought, 
_ jealously. She envied them some spontaneity, a childish suffi- 
- ciency to which she herself could never approach. They 
seemed such children to her. 

“Such good Kranzkuchen!” cried Ursula greedily. ‘So 
good! ) 

“Right,” said Gudrun. ‘Can we have Kaffee mit Kranz- 
kuchen?” she added to the waiter. 

And she seated herself on the bench beside Gerald. Birkin, 
- looking at them, felt a pain of tenderness for them. 

“T think the place is really wonderful, Gerald,” he said, 
“prachtvoll and wunderbar and wundersch6n and unbe- 
schreiblich and all the other German adjectives.” 

Gerald broke into a slight smile. 

I like it,” he said. 

\ The tables, of white scrubbed wood, were placed round 
three sides of the room, as in a Gasthaus. Birkin and Ursula 
sat with their backs to the wall, which was of oiled wood, and 
_ Gerald and Gudrun sat in the corner next them, near to the 
stove. It was a fairly large place, with a tiny bar, just like a 
country inn, but quite simple and bare, and all of oiled wood, 
_ ceilings and walls and floor, the only furniture being the tables 
and benches going round three sides, the great green stove, and 
the bar and the doors on the fourth side. The windows were 
double, and quite uncurtained. It was early evening. 


460 WOMEN IN LOVE 


The coffee came—hot and good—and a whole ring of cake. 

A whole Kuchen!” cried Ursula. ‘They give you more 
than us! I want some of yours.” 

There were other people in the place, ten altogether, so 
Birkin had found out: two artists, three students, a man and 
wife, and a Professor and two daughters—all Germans. The 
four English people, being newcomers, sat in their coign of 
vantage to watch. The Germans peeped in at the door, called 
a word to the waiter, and went away again. It was not meal- 
time, so they did not come into this dining-room, but betook 
themselves, when their boots were changed, to the Reunionsaal. 

The English visitors could hear the occasional twanging 
of a zither, the strumming of a piano, snatches of laughter and 
shouting and singing, a faint vibration of voices. The whole 
building being of wood, it seemed to carry every sound, like a 
drum, but instead of increasing each particular noise, it de- 
creased it, so that the sound of the zither seemed tiny, as if.a 
diminutive zither were playing somewhere, and it seemed the 
piano must be a small one, like a little spinet. 

The host came when the coffee was finished. He was a 
Tyrolese, broad, rather flat-cheeked, with a pale, pock-marked 
skin and flourishing moustaches. 

“Would you like to go to the Reunionsaal to be introduced 
to the other ladies and gentlemen?” he asked, bending forward 
and smiling, showing his large, strong teeth. His blue eyes 
went quickly from one to the other—he was not quite sure of 
his ground with these English people. He was unhappy too 
because he spoke no English and he was not sure whether to 
try his French. 

“Shall we go to the Reunionsaal, and be introduced to the 
other people?” repeated Gerald, laughing. 

There was a moment’s hesitation. | 

“YT suppose we’d better—better break the ice,” said Birkin. 

The women rose, rather flushed. And the Wirt’s black 
beetle-like, broad-shouldered figure went on ignominiously in 
front, towards the noise. He opened the door and ushered the 
four strangers into the play-room. 

Instantly a silence fell, a slight embarrassment came over 


CONTINENTAL 461 


the company. The newcomers had a sense of many blond 
faces looking their way. Then, the host was bowing to a short, 
energetic-looking man with large moustaches, and saying in a 
low voice: 

‘Herr Professor, darf ich vorstellen—” 

The Herr Professor was prompt and energetic. He bowed 
low to the English people, smiling, and began to be a com- 
rade at once, 

- “Nehmen die Herrschaften teil an unserer Unterhaltung?” . 
he said, with a vigorous suavity, his voice curling up in the 
question. 

The four English people smiled, lounging with an attentive 
uneasiness in the middle of the room. Gerald, who was spokes- 
man, said that they would willingly take part in the entertain- 
ment. Gudrun and Ursula, laughing, excited, felt the eyes of 
all the men upon them, and they lifted their heads and looked 
nowhere, and felt royal. 

The Professor announced the names of those present, sans 
cérémonie. There was a bowing to the wrong people and to 
the right people. Everybody was there, except the man and’ 
wife. The two tall, clear-skinned, athletic daughters of the 
professor, with their plain-cut, dark blue blouses and loden 
skirts, their rather long, strong necks, their clear blue eyes and 
carefully banded hair, and their blushes, bowed and. stood 
back; the three students bowed very low, in the humble hope of 
making an impression of extreme good-breeding; then there 
was a thin, dark-skinned man with full eyes, an odd creature, 
like a child, and like a troll, quick, detached; he bowed 
slightly; his companion, a large fair young man, stylishly 
dressed, blushed to the eyes and bowed very low. 

It was over. 

“Herr Loerke was giving us a recitation in the Cologne 
dialect,” said the Professor. 

“He must forgive us for interrupting him,” said Gerald, “‘we 
should like very much to hear it.” 

There was instantly a bowing and an offering of seats. Gud- 
run and Ursula, Gerald and Birkin sat in the deep sofas against 
the wall. The room was of naked oiled panelling, like the 


462 WOMEN IN LOVE 


rest of the house. It had a piano, sofas and chairs, and a 
couple of tables with books and magazines. In its complete 
absence of decoration, save for the big, blue stove, it was cosy 
and pleasant. 

Herr Loerke was the little man with the boyish figure, and 
the round, full, sensitive-looking head, and the quick, full 
eyes, like a mouse’s. He glanced swiftly from one to the 
other of the strangers, and held himself aloof. 

“Please go on with the recitation,” said the Professor, 
suavely, with his slight authority. Loerke, who was sitting 
hunched on the piano stool, blinked and did not answer. 

“Tt would be a great pleasure,” said Ursula, who had been 
getting the sentence ready, in German, for some minutes. 

Then, suddenly, the small, unresponding man swung aside, 
towards his previous audience and broke forth, exactly as he 
had broken off; in a controlled, mocking voice, giving an imita- 
tion of a quarrel between an old Cologne woman and a rail- 
way guard. 

His body was slight and unformed, like a boy’s, but. his 
voice was mature, sardonic, its movement had the flexibility 
of essential energy, and of a mocking penetrating understand- 
ing. Gudrun could not understand a word of his monologue, 
but she was spell-bound, watching him. He must be an artist, 
nobody else could have such fine adjustment and singleness. 
The Germans were doubled up with laughter, hearing his 
strange droll words, his droll phrases of dialect. And in the 
midst of their paroxysms, they glanced with deference at the 
four English strangers, the elect. Gudrun and Ursula were 
forced to laugh. The room rang with shouts of laughter. The 
blue eyes of the Professor’s daughters were swimming over 
with laughter-tears, their clear cheeks were flushed crimson 
with mirth, their father broke out in the most astonishing peals 
of hilarity, the students bowed their heads on their knees in 
excess of joy. Ursula looked round amazed, the laughter was 
bubbling out of her involuntarily. She looked at Gudrun. 
Gudrun looked at her, and the two sisters burst out laughing, 
carried away. Loerke glanced at them swiftly, with his full 
eyes. Birkin was sniggering involuntarily. Gerald Crich sat 


CONTINENTAL 463 


erect, with a glistening look of amusement on his face. And the 
laughter crashed out again, in wild paroxysms, the Professor’s 
daughters were reduced to shaking helplessness, the veins of 
the Professor’s neck were swollen, his face was purple, he was 
strangled in ultimate, silent spasms of laughter. The students 
were shouting half-articulated words that tailed off in helpless 
explosions. Then suddenly the rapid patter of the artist 
ceased, there were little whoops of subsiding mirth, Ursula 
and Gudrun were wiping their eyes, and the Professor was 
crying loudly: 

“Das war ausgezeichnet, das war famos—” 

“Wirklich famos,”’ echoed his exhausted daughters, faintly. 

“And we couldn’t understand it,” cried Ursula. 

“Oh leider, leider!” cried the Professor. 

“You couldn’t understand it?” cried the students, let loose 
at last in speech with the newcomers. ‘Ja, das ist wirklich 
schade, das ist schade, gnadige Frau. Wissen Sie—” 

The mixture was made, the newcomers were stirred into the 
party, like new ingredients, the whole room was alive. Gerald 
was in his element, he talked freely and excitedly, his face 
glistened with a strange amusement. Perhaps even Birkin, in 
the end, would break forth. He was shy and withheld, though 
full of attention. 

Ursula was prevailed upon to sing “Annie Lowrie,” as the 
Professor called it. There was a hush of extreme deference. 
She had never been so flattered in her life. Gudrun accom- 
panied her on the piano, playing from memory. 

Ursula had a beautiful ringing voice, but usually no con- 
fidence, she spoiled everything. This evening she felt con- 
ceited and untrammelled. Birkin was well in the background, 
she shone almost in reaction, the Germans made her feel fine 
and infallible, she was liberated into overweening self-con- 
fidence. She felt like a bird flying in the air, as her voice 
soared out, enjoying herself extremely in the balance and 
flight of the song, like the motion of a bird’s wings that is up 
in the wind, sliding and playing on the air, she sang with 
sentimentality, supported by rapturous attention. She was 
very happy, singing that song by herself, full of a conceit of 


464 _ ' WOMEN IN LOVE 


emotion and power, working upon all those people, and upon 
herself, exerting herself with gratification, giving immeasurable 
gratification to the Germans. 

At the end, the Germans were all touched with admiring, 
delicious melancholy, they praised her in soft, reverent voices, 
they could not say too much. 

“Wie schon, wie riihrend! Ach, die Schottischen Lieder, sie 
haben so viel Stimmung! Aber die gnadige Frau hat eine 
wunderbare Stimme; die gnadige Frau ist wirklich eine Kiinst- 
lerin, aber wirklich!” 

She was dilated and brilliant, like a flower in the morning 
sun. She felt Birkin looking at her, as if he were jealous of 
her, and her breasts thrilled, her veins were all golden. She 
was as happy as the sun that has just opened above clouds. 
And everybody seemed so admiring and radiant, it was perfect. 

After dinner she wanted to go out for a minute, to look at 
the world. The company tried to dissuade her—it was so 
terribly cold. But just to look, she said. 

They all four wrapped up warmly, and found themselves in 
a vague, unsubstantial outdoors of dim snow and ghosts of an 
upper-world, that made strange shadows before the stars. It 
was indeed cold, bruisingly, frighteningly, unnaturally cold. 
Ursula could not believe the air in her nostrils. It seemed 
conscious, malevolent, purposive in its intense murderous. 
coldness. 

Yet it was wonderful, an intoxication, a silence of dim, un- 
realised snow, of the Invisible intervening between her and 
the visible, between her and the flashing stars. She could see 
Orion sloping up. How wonderful he was, wonderful enough 
to make one cry aloud. 

And all around was this cradle of snow, and there was firm 
snow underfoot, that struck with heavy cold through her boot- 
soles. It was night, and silence. She imagined she could hear 
the stars. She imagined distinctly she could hear the celestial, 
musical motion of the stars, quite near at hand. She seemed 
like a bird flying amongst their harmonious motion. 

And she clung close to Birkin. Suddenly she realised she: 


CONTINENTAL 465 


did not know what he was thinking. She did not know where 
he was ranging. | 

“My love!” she said, stopping to look at him. 

His face was pale, his eyes dark, there was a faint spark 
of starlight on them. And he saw her face soft and upturned 
to him, very near. He kissed her softly. 

“What then?” he asked. 

“Do you love me?” she asked. 

“Too much,” he answered quietly. 

She clung a little closer. 

“Not too much,” she pleaded. 

“Far too much,” he said, almost sadly. 

“And does it make you sad, that I am everything to you?” 
she asked, wistful. He held her close to him, kissing her, and 
saying, scarcely audible: 

“No, but I feel like a beggar—I feel poor.” 

She was silent, looking at the stars now. Then she kissed 
him. : 

“Don’t be a beggar,” she pleaded, wistfully. “It isn’t 
ignominious that you love me.” 

“Tt is ignominious to feel poor, isn’t it?” he replied. 

“Why? Why should it be?” she asked. He only stood 
still, in the terribly cold air that moved invisibly over the 
mountain tops, folding her round with his arms. 

“T couldn’t bear this cold, eternal place without you,” he 
said. “I couldn’t bear it, it would kill the quick of my life.” 

She kissed him again, suddenly. 

“Do you hate it?” she asked, puzzled, wondering. 

“Tf I couldn’t come near to you, if you weren’t here, I should 
hate it. I couldn’t bear it,” he answered. 

“But the people are nice,” she said. 

“J mean the stillness, the cold, the frozen eternalits,” he 
said. 

She wondered. Then her spirit came home to him, nestling 
unconscious in him. 

“Yes, it is good we are warm and together,” she said. 

And they turned home again. They saw the golden lights 
of the hotel glowing out in the night of snow-silence, small in 


466 WOMEN IN LOVE 


the hollow, like a cluster of yellow berries. It seemed like a 
bunch of sun-sparks, tiny and orange in the midst of the 
snow-darkness. Behind, was a high shadow of a peak, blotting 
out the stars, like a ghost. 

They drew near to their home. They saw a man come 
from the dark building, with a lighted lantern which swung 
golden, and made that his dark feet walked in a halo of snow. 
He was a small, dark figure in the darkened snow. He un- 
latched the door of an outhouse. A smell of cows, hot, animal, 
almost like beef, came out on the heavily cold air. There was 
a glimpse of two cattle in their dark stalls, then the door was 
shut again, and not a chink of light showed. It had reminded 
Ursula again of home, of the Marsh, of her childhood, and of 
the journey to Brussels, and, strangely, of Anton Skrebensky. 

Oh, God, could one bear it, this past which was gone down 
the abyss? Could she bear, that it ever had been! She 
looked round this silent, upper world of snow and stars and 
powerful cold. There was another world, like views on a 
magic lantern; the Marsh, Cossethay, Ilkeston, lit up with a 
common, unreal light. There was a shadowy unreal Ursula, 
a whole shadow-play of an unreal life. It was as unreal, and 
circumscribed, as a magic-lantern show. She wished the slides 
could all be broken. She wished it could be gone for ever, 
like a lantern-slide which was broken. She wanted to have 
no past. She wanted to have come down from the slopes of 
heaven to this place, with Birkin, not to have toiled out of 
the murk of her childhood and her upbringing, slowly, all 
soiled. She felt that memory was a dirty trick played upon 
her. What was this decree, that she should “remember”! Why 
not a bath of pure oblivion, a new birth, without any recol- 
lections or blemish of a past life. She was with Birkin, she 
had just come into life, here in the high snow, against the 
stars. What had she to do with parents and antecedents? 
She knew herself new and unbegotten, she had no father, no 
mother, no anterior connections, she was herself, pure and 
silvery, she belonged only to the oneness with Birkin, a one- 
ness that struck deeper notes, sounding into the heart of the 


CONTINENTAL 467 


_ universe, the heart of reality, where she had never existed 
before. 

Even Gudrun was a separate unit, separate, separate, hav- 
_ ing nothing to do with this self, this Ursula, in her new world 
_ of reality. That old shadow-world, the actuality of the past 
_ —ah, let it go! She rose free on the wings of her new con- 
_ dition. 

_. Gudrun and Gerald had not come in. They had walked up 
the valley straight in front of the house, not like Ursula and 
_ Birkin, on to the little hill at the right. Gudrun was driven 
| by a strange desire. She wanted to plunge on and on, till 
bi she came to the end of the valley of snow. Then she wanted 
_ to climb the wall of white finality, climb over, into the peaks 
_ that sprang up like sharp petals in the heart of the frozen, 
_ mysterious navel of the world. She felt that there, over the 
_ strange blind, terrible wall of rocky snow, there in the navel 
| of the mystic world, among the final cluster of peaks, there, 
in the infolded navel of it all, was her consummation. If she 
' could but come there, alone, and pass into the unfolded navel 
_ of eternal snow and of uprising, immortal peaks of snow and 
| rock, she would be a oneness: with all, she would be herself the 
| eternal, infinite silence, the sleeping, timeless, frozen centre 
- of the All. 

_ They went back to the house, to the Reunionsaal. She 
_ was curious to see what was going on. The men there made 
| her alert, roused her curiosity. It was a new taste of life 
| for her, they were so prostrate before her, yet so full of life. 
_ The party was boisterous; they were dancing all together, 
_ dancing the Schuhplatteln, the Tyrolese dance of the clapping 
hands and tossing the partner in the air, at the crisis. The 
| Germans were all proficient—they were from Munich chiefly. 
_ Gerald also was quite passable. There were three zithers 
_ twanging away in a corner. It was a scene of great animation 
| and confusion. The professor was initiating Ursula into the 
| dance, stamping, clapping, and swinging her high, with amaz- 
| ing force and zest. When the crisis came even Birkin was 
_ behaving manfully with one of the professor’s fresh, strong 


468 WOMEN IN LOVE 


daughters, who was exceedingly happy. Everybody was danc- 
ing, there was the most boisterous turmoil. 

Gudrun looked on with delight. The solid wooden floor 
resounded to the knocking heels of the men, the air quivered 
with the clapping hands and the zither music, there was a 
golden dust about the hanging lamps. 

Suddenly the dance finished, Loerke and the students rushed 
out to bring im drinks. There was an excited clamour of 
voices, a clinking of mug-lids, a great crying of “Prosit— 
Prosit!” Loerke was everywhere at once, like-a gnome, sug- 
gesting drinks for the women, making an obscure, slightly risky 
joke with the men, confusing and mystifying the waiter. 

He wanted very much to dance with Gudrun. From the 
first moment he had seen her, he wanted to make a connection 
with her. Instinctively she felt this, and she waited for him 
to come up. But a kind of sulkiness kept him away from her, 
so she thought he disliked her. 

“Will you schuhplattel, gnidige Frau?” said the large, 
fair youth, Loerke’s companion. He was too soft, too humble 
for Gudrun’s taste. But she wanted to dance, and the fair 
youth, who was called Leitner, was handsome enough in his 
uneasy, slightly abject fashion, a humility that covered a 
certain fear. She accepted him as a partner. : 

The zithers sounded out again, the dance began. Gerald 
led them, laughing, with one of the Professor’s daughters. 
Ursula danced with one of the students, Birkin with the other 
daughter of the Professor, the Professor with Frau Kramer, 
and the rest of the men danced together, with quite as much 
zest as if they had had women partners. 

Because Gudrun had danced with the well-built, soft youth, 
his companion, Loerke, was more pettish and exasperated than 
ever, and would not even notice her existence in the room. 
This piqued her, but she made up to herself by dancing with 
the professor, who was strong as a mature, well-seasoned bull, 
and as full of coarse energy. She could not bear him, critically, 
and yet she enjoyed being rushed through the dance, and 
tossed up into the air, on his coarse, powerful impetus. The 
professor enjoyed it too, he eyed her with strange, large blue 


OO OE On 


CONTINENTAL 469 


eyes, full of galvanic fire. She hated him for the seasoned, 
semi-paternal animalism with which he regarded her, but she 
admired his weight of strength. 

The room was charged with excitement and strong, animal 
emotion. Loerke was kept away from Gudrun, to whom he 
wanted to speak, as by a hedge of thorns, and he felt a sar- 
donic ruthless hatred for this young love-companion, Leitner, 
who was his penniless dependent. He mocked the youth, with 
an acid ridicule, that made Leitner red in the face and impo- 
tent with resentment. 

Gerald, who had now got the dance perfectly, was dancing 
again with the younger of the Professor’s daughters, who was 
almost dying of virgin excitement, because she thought Gerald 
so handsome, so superb. He had her in his power, as if she 
were a palpitating bird, a fluttering, flushing, bewildered crea- 
ture. And it made him smile, as she shrank convulsively 
between his hands, violently, when he must throw her into 
the air. At the end, she was so overcome with prostrate love 
for him, that she could scarcely speak sensibly at all. 

Birkin was dancing with Ursula. There were odd little 
fires playing in his eyes, he seemed to have turned into some- 
thing wicked and flickering, mocking, suggestive, quite impos- 
sible. Ursula was frightened of him, and fascinated. Clear, 
before her eyes, as in a vision, she could see the sardonic, licen- 
tious mockery of his eyes, he moved towards her with subtle, 
animal, indifferent approach. The strangeness of his hands, 
which came quick and cunning, inevitably to the vital place 
beneath her breasts, and, lifting with mocking, suggestive im- 
pulse, carried her through the air as if without strength, 
through black-magic, made her swoon with fear. For a mo- 
ment she revolted, it was horrible. She would break the spell. 
But before the resolution had formed she had submitted again, 
yielded to her fear. He knew all the time what he was doing, 
she could see it in his smiling, concentrated eyes. It was his 
responsibility, she would leave it to him. 

When they were alone in the darkness, she felt the strange, 
licentiousness of him hovering upon her. She was troubled 
and repelled. Why should he turn like this? 


470 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What is it?” she asked in dread. 

But his face only glistened on her, unknown, horrible. And 
yet she was fascinated. Her impulse was to repel him violently, 
break from this spell of mocking brutishness. But she was 
too fascinated, she wanted to submit, she wanted to know. 
What would he do to her? 

He was so attractive, and so repulsive at once. The sar- 
donic, suggestivity that flickered over his face and looked 
from his narrowed eyes, made her want to hide, to hide her- 
self away from him and watch him from somewhere unseen. 

“Why are you like this?” she demanded again, rousing 
against him with sudden force and animosity. 

The flickering fires in his eyes concentrated as he looked 
into her eyes. Then the lids drooped with a faint motion of 
satiric contempt. Then they rose again to the same remorse- 
less suggestivity. And she gave way, he might do as he would. 
His licentiousness was repulsively attractive. But he was 
self-responsible, she would see what it was. 

They might do as they liked—this she realised as she went 
to sleep. How could anything that gave one satisfaction be 
excluded? What was degrading? Who cared? Degrading 
things were real, with a different reality. And he was so 
unabashed and unrestrained. Wasn’t it rather horrible, a 
man who could be so soulful and spiritual, now to be so—she 
balked at her own thoughts and memories: then she added— 
so bestial? So bestial, they two!—so degraded! She winced. 
But after all, why not? She exulted as well. Why not be 
bestial, and go the whole round of experience? She exulted 
in it. She was bestial. How good it was to be really shame- 
ful! There would be no shameful thing she had not experi- 
enced. Yet she was unabashed, she was herself. Why not? 
She was free, when she knew everything, and no dark shame- 
ful things were denied her. 

Gudrun, who had been langage Gerald in the Reunionsaal, 
suddenly thought: 

“He should have all the women he can—it is his nature. 
It is absurd to call him monogamous—he is naturally pro- 
miscuous. That is his nature.” 


CONTINENTAL 471 


The thought came to her involuntarily. It shocked her 
Somewhat. It was as if she had seen some new Mene! Mene! 
upon the wall. Yet it was merely true. A voice seemed to 
have spoken it to her so clearly, that for the moment she 
believed in inspiration. 

“It is really true,” she said to herself again. 

She knew quite well she had believed it all along. She 
knew it implicitly. But she must keep it dark—almost from 
herself. She must keep it completely secret. It was knowl- 
edge for her alone, and scarcely even to be admitted to herself. 

The deep resolve formed in her, to combat him. One of 
. them must triumph over the other. Which should it be? Her 
soul steeled itself with strength. Almost she laughed within 
herself, at her confidence. It woke a certain keen, half con- 
temptuous pity, tenderness for him: she was so ruthless. 

Everybody retired early. The professor and Loerke went 
into a small lounge to drink. They both watched Gudrun go 
along the landing by the railing upstairs. 

“Ein schones Frauenzimmer,’’ said the Professor. 

“Ja!” asserted Loerke, shortly. 

Gerald walked with his queer, long wolf-steps across the 
bedroom to the window, stooped and looked out, then rose 
again, and turned to Gudrun, his eyes sharp with an abstract 
smile. He seemed very tall to her, she saw the glisten of 
his whitish eyebrows, that met between his brows. 

“How do you like it?” he said. 

He seemed to be laughing inside himself, quite unconsciously. 
She looked at him. He was a phenomenon to her, not a 
human being: a sort of creature, greedy. 

“T like it very much,” she replied. 

“Who do you like best downstairs?” he asked, standing tall 
and glistening above her, with his glistening stiff hair erect. 

“Who do I like best?” she repeated, wanting to answer 
his question, and finding it difficult to collect herself. “Why 
I don’t know, I don’t know enough about them yet, to be 
able to say. Who do you like best?” 

“Oh, I don’t care—I don’t like or dislike any of them. It 
doesn’t matter about me. I wanted to know about you.” 


472 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“But why?” she asked, going rather pale. The abstract, 
unconscious smile in his eyes was intensified. 

“J wanted to know,” he said. 

She turned aside, breaking the spell. In some strange 
way, she felt he was getting power over her. 

“Well, I can’t tell you already,” she said. 

She went to the mirror to take out the hairpins from her 
hair. She stood before the mirror every night for some min- 
utes, brushing her fine dark hair. It was part of the inevitable 
ritual of her life. 

He followed her, and stood behind her. She was busy 
with bent head, taking out the pins and shaking her warm 
hair loose. When she looked up, she saw him in the glass, 
standing behind her, watching unconsciously, not consciously 
seeing her, and yet watching, with fine-pupilled eyes that 
seemed to smile, and which were not really smiling. 

She started. It took all her courage for her to continue 
brushing her hair, as usual, for her to pretend she was at her 
ease. She was far, far from being at her ease with him. She: 
beat her brains wildly for something to say to him. 

“What are your plans for to-morrow?” she asked noncha- 
lantly, whilst her heart was beating so furiously, her eyes 
were so bright with strange nervousness, she felt he could 
not but observe. But she knew also that he was completely 
blind, blind as a wolf looking at her. It was a strange battle 
between her ordinary consciousness and his uncanny, black-art 
consciousness. 

“I don’t know,” he replied, “what would you like to do?” 

He spoke emptily, his mind was sunk away. 

“Oh,” she said, with easy protestation, “I’m ready for any- 
thing—anything will be fine for me, I’m sure.” 

_ And to herself she was saying: “God, why am I so nervous 
—why are you so nervous, you fool. If he sees it I’m done 
for for ever—you know you’re done for for ever, if he sees 
the absurd state you’re in.” 

And she smiled to herself as if it were all child’s play. 
Meanwhile her heart was plunging, she was almost fainting. 
She could see him, in the mirror, as he stood there behind 


CONTINENTAL 473 


her, tall and over-arching—blond and terribly frightening. 
She glanced at his reflection with furtive eyes, willing to give 
anything to save him from knowing she could see him. He 
did not know she could see his reflection. He was looking 
unconsciously, glistening down at her head, from which the 
hair fell loose, as she brushed it with wild, nervous hand. 
She held her head aside and brushed and brushed her hair 
madly. For her life, she could not turn round and face him. 
For her life, ske could not. And the knowledge made her 
almost sink to the ground in a faint, helpless, spent. She 
was aware of his frightening, impending figure standing close 
behind her, she was aware of his hard, strong, unyielding 
chest, close upon her back. And she felt she could not bear 
it any more, in a few minutes she would fall down at his feet, 
grovelling at his feet, and letting him destroy her. 

The thought pricked up all her sharp intelligence and pres- 
ence of mind. She dared not turn round to him—and there 
he stood motionless, unbroken. Summoning all her strength, 
she said, in a full, resonant, nonchalant voice, that was forced 
out with all her remaining self-control: 

“Oh, would you mind looking in that bag behind there and 
giving me my—” 

Here her power fell inert. “My what—my what—?” she 
screamed in silence to herself. 

But he had started round, surprised and startled that she 
should ask him to look in her bag, which she always kept so 
very private to herself. She turned now, her face white, her 
dark eyes blazing with uncanny, overwrought excitement. 
She saw him stooping to the bag, undoing the loosely buckled 
strap, unattentive. 

“Your what?” he asked. 
~ “Oh, a little enamel box—yellow—with a design of a cormo- 
rant plucking her breast—” 

She went towards him, stooping her beautiful, bare arm, 
and deftly turned some of her things, disclosing the box, 
which was exquisitely painted. 

“That is it, see,” she said, taking it from under his eyes. 

And he was baffled now. He was left to fasten up the bag, 


474 WOMEN IN LOVE 


whilst she swiftly did up her hair for the night, and sat down 
to unfasten her shoes. She would not turn her back to him 
any more. 

He was baffled, frustrated, but unconscious. She had the 
whip hand over him now. . She knew he had not realised her 
terrible panic. Her heart was beating heavily still. Fool, 
fool that she was, to get into such a state! How she thanked 
God for Gerald’s obtuse blindness. Thank God he could see 
nothing. 

She sat slowly unlacing her shoes, and he too commenced 
to undress. Thank God that crisis was over. She felt almost 
fond of him now, almost in love with him. 

“Ah, Gerald,” she laughed, caressively, teasingly, “Ah, what 
a fine game you played with the Professor’s daughter—didn’t 
you now?” 

“What game?” he asked, looking around. 

“Isn’t she in love with you—oh dear, isn’t she in love 
with you!” said Gudrun, in her gayest, most attractive mood. 

“T shouldn’t think so,” he said. 

“Shouldn’t think so!” she teased. “Why the poor girl is 
lying at this moment overwhelmed, dying with love for you. 
She thinks you’re wonderful—oh marvellous, beyond what 
man has ever been. Really, isn’t it funny?” 

“Why funny, what is funny?” he asked. 

“Why to see you working it on her,” she said, with a half 
reproach that confused the male conceit in him. “Really 
Gerald, the poor girl—!” 

“T did nothing to her,” he said. 

“Oh, it was too shameful, the way you simply swept her off 
her feet.” 

“That was Schuhplatteln,” he replied, with a bright grin. 

“Ha—ha—ha!” laughed Gudrun. 

Her mockery quivered through his muscles with curious 
re-echoes. When he slept he seemed to crouch down in the 
bed, lapped up in his own strength, that yet was hollow. 

And Gudrun slept strongly, a victorious sleep. Suddenly, 
she was almost fiercely awake. The small timber room glowed 
with the dawn, that came upwards from the low window. She 


CONTINENTAL 478 


could see down the valley when she lifted her head: the snow 
with a pinkish, half-revealed magic, the fringe of pine-trees 
at the bottom of the slope. And one tiny figure moved over 
the vaguely-illuminated space. 

She glanced at his watch; it was seven o’clock. He was 
still completely asleep. And she was so hard awake, it was 
almost frightening—a hard, metallic wakefulness. She lay 
looking at him. 

He slept in the subjection of his own health and defeat. 
She was overcome by a sincere regard for him. Till now, she 
was afraid before him. She lay and thought about him, 
what he was, what he represented in the world. A fine, inde- 
pendent will, he had. She thought of the revolution he had 
worked in the mines, in so short a time. She knew that, if 
he were confronted with any problem, any hard actual diffi- 
culty, he would overcome it. If he laid hold of any idea, he 
would carry it through. He had the faculty of making order 
out of confusion. Only let him grip hold of a situation, and 
he would bring to pass an inevitable conclusion. 

For a few moments she was borne away on the wild wings 
of ambition. Gerald, with his force of will and his power for 
comprehending the actual world, should be set to solve the 
problems of the day, the problem of industrialism in the mod- 
ern world. She knew he would, in the tourse of time, effect 
the changes he desired, he could re-organise the industrial 
system. She knew he could do it. As an instrument, in these 
things, he was marvellous, she had never seen any man with 
his potentiality. He was unaware of it, but she knew. 

He only needed to be hitched on, he needed that his hand 
should be set to the task, because he was so unconscious. And 
this she could do. She would marry him, he would go into 
Parliament in the Conservative interest, he would clear up 
the great muddle of labour and industry. He was so superbly 
fearless, masterful, he knew that every problem could be 
worked out, in life as in geometry. And he would care neither 
about himself nor about anything but the pure working out 
of the problem. He was very pure, really. 

Her heart beat fast, she flew away on wings of elation, 


> 


476 WOMEN IN LOVE 


imagining a future. He would be a Napoleon of peace, or 
a Bismarck—and she the woman behind him. She had read 
Bismarck’s letters, and had been deeply moved by them. 
And Gerald would be freer, more dauntless than Bismarck. 

But even as she lay in fictitious transport, bathed in the 
strange, false sunshine of hope in life, something seemed to 
snap in her, and a terrible cynicism began to gain upon her, 
blowing in like a wind. Everything turned to irony with her: 
the last flavour of everything was ironical. When she felt 
her pang of undeniable reality, this was when she knew the 
hard irony of hopes and ideas. 

She lay and looked at him, as he slept. He was sheerly 
beautiful, he was a perfect instrument. To her mind, he was 
a pure, inhuman, almost superhuman instrument. His instru- 
mentality appealed so strongly to her, she wished she were 
God, to use him as a tool. 

And at the same instant, came the ironical question: ‘What. 
for?” She thought of the colliers’ wives, with their linoleum 
and their lace curtains and their little girls in high-laced boots. 
She thought of the wives and daughters of the pit-managers, 
their tennis -parties, and their terrible struggles to be superior 
each to the other, in the social scale. There was Shortlands 
with its meaningless distinction, the meaningless crowd of the 
Criches. ‘There was London, the House of Commons, the 
extant social world. My God! 

Young as she was, Gudrun had touched the whole pulse 
of social England. She had no ideas of rising in the world. 
She knew, with the perfect cynicism of cruel youth, that to 
rise in the world meant to have ene outside show instead of 
another, the advance was like having a spurious half-crown 
instead of a spurious penny. The whole coinage of valuation 
was spurious. Yet of course, her cynicism knew well enough 
that, in a world where spurious coin was current, a bad 
sovereign was better than a bad farthing. But rich and poor, 
she despised both alike. 

Already she mocked at herself for her dreams. They could 
be fulfilled easily enough. But she recognised too well, in her 
spirit, the mockery of her own impulses. What did she care, 


CONTINENTAL 477 


_ that Gerald had created a richly-paying industry out of an 
old worn-out concern? What did she care? The worn-out 
- concern and the rapid, splendidly organised industry, they were 
bad money. Yet of course, she cared a great deal, outwardly— 
_and outwardly was all that mattered, for inwardly was a bad 
_ joke. 
Everything was intrinsically a piece of irony to her. She 
leaned over Gerald and said in her heart of compassion: 
“Oh, my dear, my dear, the game isn’t worth even you. 
_ You are a fine thing really—why should you be used on such 
a poor show!” 
_ Her heart was breaking with pity and grief for him. And 
at the same moment, a grimace came over her mouth, of mock- 
_ ing irony at her own unspoken tirade. Ah, what a farce it 
was! She thought of Parnell and Katherine O’Shea. Parnell! 
After all, who can take the nationalisation of Ireland seri- 
_ ously? Who can take political Ireland really seriously, what- 
_ ever it does? And who can take political England seriously? 
Who can? Who can care a straw, really, how the old patched- 
up Constitution is tinkered at any more? Who cares a button 
for our national ideas, any more than for our national bowler 
hat? Aha, it is all old hat, it is all old bowler hat! 
“That’s all it is, Gerald, my young hero. At any rate we'll 
_ spare ourselves the nausea of stirring the old broth any more. 
_ You be beaytiful, my Gerald, and reckless. There ere perfect 
_ moments. Wake up, Gerald, wake up, convince me of the 
perfect moments. Oh, convince me, I need it.” 
He opened his eyes, and looked at her. She greeted him 
with a mocking, enigmatic smile in which was a poignant 
gaiety. Over his face went the reflection of the smile, he 
smiled, too, purely unconsciously. 
That filled her with extraordinary delight, to see the smile 
cross his face, reflected from her face. She remembered that 
_ was how a baby smiled. It filled her with extraordinary radiant 
delight. 
“You’ve done it,” she said. 
“What?” he asked, dazed. 
“Convincd me.” 


-_ Oe eee eee eee 


478 WOMEN IN LOVE 


And she bent down, kissing him passionately, passionately, — 
so that he was bewildered. He did not ask her of what he had 
convinced her, though he meant to. He was glad she was — 
kissing him. She seemed to be feeling for his very heart to 
touch the quick of him. And he wanted her to touch the quick 
of his being, he wanted that most of all. 

Outside, somebody was singing, in a manly, reckless hand- 
some voice: | 


“Mach mir auf, mach mir auf, du Stolze, 
Mach mir ein Feuer von Holze. 

Vom Regen bin ich nass 

Vom Regen bin ich nass—” 


Gudrun knew that that song would sound through her 
eternity, sung in a manly, reckless, mocking voice. It marked — 
one of her supreme moments, the supreme pangs of her nervous 
gratification. There it was, fixed in eternity for her. 

The day came fine and bluish. There was a light wind 
blowing among the mountain tops, keen as a rapier where it 
touched, carrying with it a fine dust of snow-powder. Gerald | 
went out with the fine, blind face of a man who is in his state © 
of fulfilment. Gudrun and he were in perfect static unity this 
morning, but unseeing and unwitting. They went out with a — 
toboggan, leaving Ursula and Birkin to follow. 

Gudrun was all scarlet and royal blue—a scarlet jersey and 
cap, and a royal blue skirt and stockings. She went gaily over 
the white snow, with Gerald beside her, in white and grey, 
pulling the little toboggan. They grew small in the distance of — 
snow, climbing the steep slope. 

For Gudrun herself, she seemed to pass altogether into the : 
whiteness of the snow, she became a pure, thoughtless crystal. 
When she reached the top of the slope, in the wind, she looked — 
round, and saw peak beyond peak of rock and snow, bluish, 
transcendent in heaven. And it seemed to her like a garden, — 
with the peaks for pure flowers, and her heart gathering them. 
She had no separate consciousness for Gerald, 

She held on to him as they went sheering down over the 
keen slope. She felt as if her senses were being whetted on 


CONTINENTAL 479 


some fine grindstone, that was keen as flame. The snow 
sprinted on either side, like sparks from a blade that is being 
sharpened, the whiteness round about ran swifter, swifter, in 
pure flame the white slope flew against her, and she fused like 
one molten, dancing globule, rushed through a white intensity. 
Then there was a great swerve at the bottom, when they swung 
as it were in a fall to earth, in the diminishing motion. 

They came to rest. But when she rose to her feet, she 
could not stand. She gave a strange cry, turned and clung to 
him, sinking her face on his breast, fainting in him. Utter 
oblivion came over her, as she lay for a few moments abandoned 
against him. 

“What is it?” he was saying. ‘Was it too much for you?” 

But she heard nothing. 

When she came to, she stood up and looked round, astonished, 
Her face was white, her eyes brilliant and large. 

“What is it?” he repeated. “Did it upset you?” 

She looked at him with her brilliant eyes that seemed to 
have undergone some transfiguration, and she laughed, with a 
terrible merriment. 

“No,” she cried, with triumphant joy. “It was the complete 
moment of my life.” j 

And she looked at him with her dazzling, overweening 
laughter, like one possessed. A fine blade seemed to enter his 
heart, but he did not care, ox.take any notice. 

But they climbed up the slope again, and they flew down 
through the white flame again, splendidly, splendidly. Gudrun 
was laughing and flashing, powdered with snow-crystals, Gerald 
worked perfectly. He felt he could guide the toboggan to a 
hair-breadth, almost he could make it pierce into the air and 
right into the very heart of the sky. It seemed to him the 
flying sledge was but his strength spread out, he had but to 
move his arms, the motion was his own. They explored the 
great slopes, to find another slide. He felt there must be 
something better than they had known. And he found what 
he desired, a perfect long, fierce sweep, sheering past the foot 
of a rock and into the trees at the base. It was dangerous, he 


480 WOMEN IN LOVE 


knew. But then he knew also he would direct the sledge 
between his fingers. 

The first days passed in an ecstasy of physical motion, sleigh- 
ing, ski-ing, skating, moving in an intensity of speed and white 
light that surpassed life itself, and carried the souls of the 
human beings beyond into an inhuman abstraction of velocity 
and weight and eternal, frozen snow. 

Gerald’s eyes became hard and strange, and as he went by 
on his skis he was more like some powerful, fateful sigh than a 
man, his muscles elastic in a perfect, soaring trajectory, his 


body projected in pure flight, mindless, soulless, whirling along 


one perfect line of force. 

Luckily there came a day of snow, when they must all stay 
indoors: otherwise Birkin said, they would all lose their 
faculties, and begin to utter themselves in cries and shrieks, 
like some strange, unknown species of snow-creatures. 

It happened in the afternoon that Ursula sat in the Reunion- 
saal talking to Loerke. The latter had seemed unhappy lately. 
He was lively and full of mischievous humour, as usual. 

But Ursula had thought he was sulky about something, His 
partner, too, the big, fair, good-looking youth, was ill at ease, 
going about as if he belonged to nowhere, and was kept in some 
sort of subjection, against which he was rebelling. 

Loerke had hardly talked to Gudrun. His associate, on the 
other hand, had paid her constantly a soft, over-deferential 
attention. Gudrun wanted to talk to Loerke. He was a 
sculptor, and she wanted to hear his view of his art. And his 
figure attracted her. There was the look of a little wastrel 
about him, that intrigued her, and an old man’s look, that 
interested her, and then, beside this, an uncanny singleness, a 
quality of being by himself, not in contact with anybody else, 
that marked out an artist to her. He was a chatterer, a 
magpie, a maker of mischievous word-jokes, that were some- 
times very clever, but which often were not. And she could 
see in his brown, gnome’s eyes, the blank look of inorganic 
misery, which lay behind all his small buffoonery. 

His figure interested her—the figure of a boy, almost a street 
arab. He made no attempt to conceal it. He always wore a 


CONTINENTAL 481 


simple loden suit, with knee breeches. His legs were thin, 
and he made no attempt to disguise the fact: which was of 
itself remarkable, in a Germaa. And he never ingratiated 
himself anywhere, not in the slightest, but kept to himself, 
for all his apparent playfulness. 

Leitner, his companion, was a great sportsman, very hand- 
some with his big limbs and his blue eyes. Loerke would go 
tobogganning or skating, in little snatches, but he was 
indifferent. And his fine, thin nostrils, the nostrils of a pure- 
bred street arab, would quiver with contempt at Leitner’s 
splothering gymnastic displays. It was evident that the two 
men who had travelled and lived together in the last degree of 
intimacy, had now reached the stage of loathing. Leitner hated 
Loerke with an injured, writhing, impotent hatred, and Loerke 
treated Leitner with a fine-quivering contempt and sarcasm. 
Soon the two would have to go apart. 

Already they were rarely together. Leitner ran attaching 
himself to somebody or other, always deferring, Loerke was a 
good deal alone. Out of doors he wore a Westphalian cap, a 
close brown-velvet head with big brown velvet flaps down 
over his ears, so that he looked like a lop-eared rabbit, or a 
troll. His face was brown-red, with a dry, bright skin, that 
seemed to crinkle with his mobile expressions. His eyes were 
arresting—brown, full, like a rabbit’s, or like a troll’s, or like 
the eyes of a lost being, having a strange, dumb, depraved look 
of knowledge, and a quick spark of uncanny fire. Whenever 
Gudrun had tried to talk to him he had shied away unrespon- 
sive, looking at her with his watchful dark eyes, but entering 
into no relation with her. He had made her feel that her slow 
French and her slower German, were hateful to him. As for 
his own inadequate English, he was much too awkward to try 
it at all. But he understood a good deal of what was said, 
nevertheless. And Gudrun, piqued, left him alone. 

This. afternoon, however, she came into the lounge as he 
was talking to Ursula. His fine, black hair somehow reminded 
her of a bat, thin as it was on his full, sensitive-looking head, 
and worn away at the temples. He sat hunched up, as if his 
spirit were bat-like. And Gudrun could see he was making 


482 WOMEN IN LOVE 


some slow confidence to Ursula, unwilling, a slow, grudging, 
scanty self-revelation. She went and sat by her sister. 

He looked at her, then looked away again, as if he took no 
notice of her. But as a matter of fact, she interested him 
deeply. 

“Tsn’t it interesting, Prune,” said Ursula, turning to her 
sister, ““Herr Loerke is doing a great frieze for a factory in 
Cologne, for the outside, the street.” 

She looked at him, at his thin, brown, nervous hands, that 
were prehensile, and somehow like talons, like “griffes,” 
inhuman. 

“What in?” she asked. 

“Aus was?” repeated Ursula. 

“Granit,” he replied. 

It had become immediately a laconic series of question and 
answer between fellow craftsmen. 

“What is the relief?” asked Gudrun. 

“Alto relievo.” 

“And at what height?” 

It was very interesting to Gudrun to think of his making the 
great granite frieze for a great granite factory in Cologne. She 
got from him some notion of the design. It was a representation 
of a fair, with peasants and artizans in an orgy of enjoyment, 
drunk and absurd in their modern dress, whirling ridiculously 
in roundabouts, gaping at shows, kissing and staggering and 
rolling in knots, swinging in swing:boats, and firing down 
shooting galleries, a frenzy of chaotic motion. 

There was a swift discussion of technicalities. Gudrun was 
very much impressed. 

“But how wonderful, to have such a factory!” cried Ursula. 
“Ts the whole building fine?” 

“Oh yes,” he replied. “The frieze is part of the whole 
architecture. Yes, it is a colossal thing.” 

Then he seemed to stiffen, shrugged his shoulders, and went 
on: 

“Sculpture and architecture must go together. The day for 
irrelevant statues, as for wall pictures, is over. As a matter of 
fact sculpture is always part of an architectural conception. 


—————a- lle OO, 


CL a se oe — 


CONTINENTAL 483 


And since churches are all museum stuff, since industry is our 
business, now, then let us make our places of industry our art 
—our factory-area our Parthenon, ecco!” 

Ursula pondered. 

“I suppose,” she said, “there is no need for our great works 
to be so hideous.” 

Instantly he broke into motion. 

“There you are!” he cried, “there you are! There is not 
only no need for our places of work to be ugly, but their 
ugliness ruins the work, in the end. Men will not go on 
submitting to such intolerable ugliness. In the end it will 
hurt too much, and they. will wither because of it. And this 
will wither the work as well. They will think the work itself 
is ugly: the machines, the very act of labour. Whereas the 
machinery and the acts of labour are extremely, maddeningly 
beautiful. But this will be the end of our civilisation, when 
people will not work because work has become so intolerable 
to their senses, it nauseates them too much, they would rather 
starve. Then we shall see the hammer used only for smashing, 
then we shall see it. Yet here we are—we have the opportunity 
to make beautiful factories, beautiful machine-houses—we have 
the opportunity—” 

Gudrun could only partly understand. She could have cried 
with vexation. 

“What does he say?” she asked Ursula. And Ursula trans- 
lated, stammering and brief. Loerke watched Gudrun’s face, 
to see her judgment. 

“And do you think then,” said Gudrun, ae art should 
serve industry?” 

“Art should interpret industry, as art once interpreted 
religion,” he said. 

“But does your fair interpret industry?” she asked him. 

“Certainly. What is man doing, when he is at a fair like 
this? He is fulfilling the counterpart of labour—the machine 
works him, instead of he the machine. He enjoys the mechan- 
ical motion, in his own body.” 

“But is there nothing but work—mechanical work?” said 
Gudrun. 


484 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Nothing but work!” he repeated, leaning forward, his eyes 
two darknesses, with needle-points of light. ‘No, it is nothing 
but this, serving a machine, or enjoying the motion of a 
machine—motion, that is all. You have never worked for 
hunger, or you would know what god governs us.” 

Gudrun quivered and flushed. For some reason she was 
almost in tears. 

“No, I have not worked for hunger,” she replied, “but I 
have worked!” 

“Travaillé—lavorato?” he asked. “E che lavoro—che 
lavoro? Quel travail est-ce que vous avez fait?” 

He broke into a mixture of Italian and French, instinctively 
using a foreign language when he spoke to her. 

“You have never worked as the world works,” he said to 
her, with sarcasm. | 
- “Yes,” she said. “TI have. And I do—I work now for my 
daily bread: vi 

He paused, looked at her steadily, then dnioped the subject 
entirely. She seemed to him to be trifling. 

“But have you ever worked as the world works?” Ursula 
asked him. 

He looked at her untrustful. 

“Yes,” he replied, with a surly bark. “I have known what 
it was to lie in bed for three days, because I had nothing to 
eat.” 

Gudrun was looking at him with large, grave eyes, that 
seemed to draw the confession from him as the marrow from 
his bones. All his nature held him back from confessing. And 
yet her large, grave eyes upon him seemed to open some valve 
in his veins, and involuntarily he was telling: 

“My father was a man who did not like work, and we had 
no mother. We lived in Austria, Polish Austria. How did 
we live? Ha!—somehow! Mostly in a room with three other 
families—one set in each corner—and the W.C. in the middle 
of the room—a pan with a plank on it—ha! I had two 
brothers and a sister—and there might be a woman with my 
father. He was a free being, in his way—would fight with 
any man in the town—a garrison town—and was a little man 


CONTINENTAL 485 


too. But he wouldn’t work for anybody—set his heart against 
it, and wouldn’t.” 

“And how did you live then?” asked Ursula. 

He looked at her—then, suddenly, at Gudrun. 

“Do you understand?” he asked. 

“Enough,” she replied. 

Their eyes met for a moment. Then he looked away. He 
would say no more. 

“And how did you become a sculptor?” asked Ursula. 

“How did I become a sculptor—” he paused. “Dunque—” 
he resumed, in a changed manner, and beginning to speak 
French—“I became old enough—lI used to steal from the 
market-place. Later I went to work—imprinted the stamp on 
clay bottles, before they were baked. It was an earthenware- 
bottle factory. There I began making models. One day, I 
had had enough. I lay in the sun and did not go to work. 
Then I walked to Munich—then I walked to Italy—begging, 
begging everything. 

“The Italians were very good to me—they were good and 
honourable to me. From Bozen to Rome, almost every night 
I had a meal and a bed, perhaps of straw, with some peasant. 
_ I love the Italian people, with all my heart. 

“Dunque, adesso—maintenant—I earn a thousand pounds 
in a year, or I earn two thousand—” 

He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into 
silence. 

Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown 
from the sun, drawn tight over his full temples; and at his 
thin hair, and at the thick, coarse, brush-like moustache, cut 
short about his mobile, rather shapeless mouth. 

How old are you?” she asked. 

He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled. 

“Wie alt?” he repeated. And he hesitated. It was evi- 
dently one of his reticencies. 

“How old are you?” he replied, without answering. 

“T am twenty-six,” she answered. 

“Twenty-six,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. He 
paused. Then he said: 


486 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Und Ihr Herr Gemahl, wie alt is er?” 

“Who?” asked Gudrun. 

“Your husband,” said Ursula, with a certain irony. 

“T haven’t got a husband,” said Gudrun in English. In 
German she answered, 

“He is thirty-one.” 

But Loerke was watching closely, with his uncanny, full, 
suspicious eyes. Something in Gudrun seemed to accord with 
him. He was really like one of the “little people” who have 
no soul, and has found his mate in a human being. But he 
suffered in his discovery. She too was fascinated by him, 
fascinated, as if some strange creature, a rabbit or a bat, or 
a brown seal, had begun to talk to her. But also, she knew 
what he was unconscious of, his tremendous power of under- 
standing, of apprehending her living motion. He did not 
know his own power. He did not know how, with his full, 
submerged, watchful eyes, he could look into her and see her, 
what she was, see her secrets. He would only want her to be 
herself—he knew her verily, with a subconscious, sinister 
knowledge, devoid of illusions and hopes. 

To Gudrun, there was in Loerke the rock-bottom of all life. 
Everybody else had their illusion, must have their illusion, 
their before and after. But he, with a perfect stoicism, did 
without any before and after, dispensed with all illusion. He 


did not deceive himself in the last issue. In the last issue he | 


cared about nothing, he was troubled about nothing, he made 
not the slightest attempt to be at one with anything. He 
existed a pure, unconnected will, stoical and momentaneous. 
There was only his work. 

It was curious, too, how his poverty, the degradation of his 
earlier life, attracted her. There was something insipid and 
tasteless to her, in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had 
gone the usual course through school and university. A cer- 
tain violent sympathy, however, came up in her for this mud- 
child. He seemed to be the very stuff of the under-world of 
life. There was no going beyond him. 

Ursula too was attracted by Loerke. In both sisters he 
commanded a certain homage. But there were moments when 


CONTINENTAL 487 


to Ursula he seemed indescribably inferior, false, a vulgarism. 

Both Birkin and Gerald disliked him, Gerald ignoring him 
with some contempt, Birkin exasperated. 

“What do the women find so impressive in that little brat?” 
Gerald asked. 

“God alone knows,” replied Birkin, “unless it’s some sort 
of appeal he makes to them, which flatters them and has such 
a power over them.” 

Gerald looked up in surprise. 

“Does he make an appeal to them?” he asked. 

“Oh yes,” replied Birkin. “He is the perfectly subjected 
being, existing almost like a criminal. And the women rush 
towards that, like a current of air towards a vacuum.” 

“Funny they should rush to that,” said Gerald. | 

“Makes one mad, too,” said Birkin. ‘But he has the fasci- 
nation of pity and repulsion for them, a little obscene monster 
of the darkness that he is.” 

Gerald stood still, suspended in thought. 

“What do women want, at the bottom?” he asked. 

Birkin shrugged his shoulders. 

“God knows,” he said. ‘Some satisfaction in basic repul- 
sion, it seems to me. They seem to creep down some ghastly 
tunnel of darkness, and will never be satisfied till they’ve 
come to the end.” 

Gerald looked out into the mist of fine snow that was blow- 
ing by. Everywhere was blind to-day, horribly blind. 

“And what is the end?” he asked. 

Birkin shook his head. 

“T’ve not got there yet, so I don’t know. Ask Loerke, he’s 
pretty near. He is a good many stages further than either 
you or I can go.” 

“Yes, but stages further in what?” cried Gerald, irritated. 

Birkin sighed, and gathered his brows into a knot of anger. 

“Stages further in social hatred,” he said. “He lives like 
a rat, in the river of corruption, just where it falls over into 
the bottomless pit. He’s further on than we are. He hates 
the ideal more acutely. He fates the ideal utterly, yet it 


488 WOMEN IN LOVE 


still dominates him. I expect he is a Jew—or part Jewish.” 

“Probably,” said Gerald. 

“He is a gnawing little negation, gnawing at the roots of 
life.” 

“But why does anybody care about him?” cried Gerald. . 

“Because they hate the ideal also, in their souls. They 
want to explore the sewers, and he’s the wizard rat that swims 
ahead.” 

Still Gerald stood and stared at the blind. haze of snow 
outside. 

“I don’t understand your terms, really,” he said, in a flat, 
doomed voice. “But it sounds a rum sort of desire.” 

“T suppose you want the same,” said Birkin. “Only you 
want to take a quick jump downwards, in a sort of ecstasy— 
and he ebbs with the stream, the sewer stream.” 

Meanwhile Gudrun and Ursula waited for the next oppor- 
tunity to talk to Loerke. It was no use beginning when the 
men were there. Then they could get into no touch with the 
isolated little sculptor. He had to be alone with them: And 
he preferred Ursula to be there, as a sort of transmitter to 
Gudrun. , 

“Do you do nothing but architectural sculpture?” Gudrun 
asked him one evening. 

“Not now,” he replied. “I have done all sorts—except por- 
traits—I never did portraits. But other things—” 

“What kind of things?” asked Gudrun. 

He paused a moment, then rose, and went out of the room. 
He returned almost immediately with a little roll of paper, 
which he handed to her. She unrolled it. It was a photo- 
gravure reproduction of a statuette, signed “F. Loerke.” 

“That is quite an early thing—mnot mechanical,” he said, 
“more popular.” 

The statuette was of a naked girl, small, finely made, sit- 
ting on a great naked horse. The girl was young and tender, 
a mere bud. She was sitting sideways on_the horse, her face 
in her hands, as if in shame and grief, in a little abandon. Her 
hair, which was short and must be flaxen, fell forward, divided, 
half covering her hands. 


CONTINENTAL 489 


Her limbs were young and tender. Her legs, scarcely formed 
yet, the legs of a maiden just passing towards cruel woman- 
hood, dangled childishly over the side of the powerful horse, 
pathetically, the small feet folded one over the other, as if to 
hide. But there was no hiding. There she was exposed naked 
on the naked flark of the horse. 

The horse stood stock still, stretched in a kind of start. It 
was a massive, magnificent stallion, rigid with pent-up power. 
Its neck was arched and terrible, like a sickle, its flanks were 
pressed back, rigid with power. 

Gudrun went pale, and a darkness came over her eyes, like 
shame, she looked up with a certain supplication, almost slave- 
like. He glanced at her, and jerked his head a little. 

“How big is it?”’ she asked, in a toneless voice, persisting in 
appearing casual and unaffected. 

“How big?” he replied, glancing again at her. “Without 
pedestal—so high—” he measured with his hand—‘with 
pedestal, so—” 

He looked at her steadily. There was a little brusque, tur- 
gid contempt for her in his swift gesture, and she seemed to 
cringe a little. 

“And what is it done in?” she asked, throwing back her 
head and looking at him with affected coldness. 

He still gazed at her steadily, and his dominance was not 
shaken. 

“Bronze—green bronze.” 

“Green bronze!” repeated Gudrun, coldly accepting his 
challenge. She was thinking of the slender, immature, tender 
limbs of the girl, smooth and cold in green bronze. 

“Yes, beautiful,” she murmured, looking up at him with a 
certain dark homage. 

He closed his eyes and looked aside, triumphant. 

“Why,” said Ursula, “did you make the horse so stiff? It 
is as stiff as a block.” 

“Stiff?” he repeated, in arms at once. 

“Yes. Look how stock and stupid and brutal it is. Horses 
are sensitive, quite delicate and sensitive, really.” 

He raised his shoulders, spread his hands in a shrug of slow 


490 WOMEN IN LOVE 


indifference, as much as to inform her she was an amateur 
and an impertinent nobody. 

“Wissen Sie,” he said, with an insulting patience and con- 
descension in his voice, “that horse is a certain form, part of 
a whole form. It is part of a work of art, a piece of form. 
It is not a picture of a friendly horse to which you give a 
lump of sugar, do you see—it is part of a work of art, it has 
no relation to anything outside that work of art.” 

Ursula, angry at being treated quite so insultingly de haut 
en bas, ‘ae the height of esoteric art to the depth of general 
exiteric amateurism, replied, hotly, flushing and lifting her 
face. 

“But it is a picture of a horse, nevertheless.” 

He lifted his shoulders in another shrug. 

“As you like—it is not a picture of a cow, certainly.” 

Here Gudrun broke in, flushed and brilliant, anxious to 
avoid any more of this, any more of Ursula’s foolish persistence 
in giving herself away. 

“What do you mean by ‘it is a picture of a horse?’” she 
cried at her sister. “What do you mean by a horse? You 
mean an idea you have in your head, and which you want to 
see represented. There is another idea altogether, quite an- 
other idea. Call it a horse if you like, or say it is not a horse. 
I have just as much right to say that your horse isn’t a horse, 
that it is a falsity of your own make-up.” 

Ursula wavered, baffled. Then her words came. 

“But why does he have this idea of a horse?” she said. “TI 
know it is his idea. I know it is a picture of himself, really—” 

Loerke snorted with rage. 

“A picture of myself!’ he repeated, in derision. ‘Wissen 
sie, gnadige Frau, that is a Kunstwerk, a work of art. It is 
a work of art, it is a picture of nothing, of absolutely nothing. 
It has nothing to do with anything but itself, it has no rela- 
tion with the everyday world of this and other, there is no 
connection between them, absolutely none, they are two dif- 
ferent and distinct planes of existence; and to translate one 
into the other is worse than foolish, it is a darkening of all 
counsel, a making confusion everywhere. Do you see, you 


CONTINENTAL 491 


must not confuse the relative work of action, with the absolute 
world of art. That you must not do.” 

“That is quite true,” cried Gudrun, let loose in a sort of 
rhapsody. ‘The two things are quite and permanently apart, 
they have nothing to do with one another. ‘J and my art, they 
have nothing to do with each other. My art stands in another 
world, I am in this world.” 

Her face was flushed and transfigured. Loerke who was sit- 
ting with his head ducked, like some creature at bay, looked 
up at her, swiftly, almost furtively, and murmured: 

“‘Ja—so ist es, so ist es.” : 

Ursula was silent after this outburst. She was furious. She 
wanted to poke a hole into them both. 

“Tt isn’t a word of it true, of all this harangue you have 
made me,” she replied flatly. ‘The horse is a picture of your 
own stock, stupid brutality, and the girl was a girl you loved 
and tortured and then ignored.” 

He looked up at her with a small smile of contempt in his 
eyes. He would not trouble to answer this last charge. 

Gudrun too was silent in exasperated contempt. Ursula was 
such an insufferable outsider, rushing in where angels would 
fear to tread. But then—fools must be suffered, if not gladly. 

But Ursula was persistent too. 

“As for your world of art and your world of reality,” she 
replied, “you have to separate the two, because you can’t bear 
to know what you are. You can’t bear to realise what a stock, 
stiff, hide-bound brutality you are really, so you say ‘it’s the 
world of art.’ The world of art is only the truth about the 
real world, that’s all—but you are too far gone to see it.” 

She was white and trembling, intent. Gudrun and Loerke 
sat in stiff dislike of her. Gerald too, who had come up in 
the beginning of the speech, stood looking at her in complete 
disapproval and opposition. He felt she was undignified, she 
put a sort of vulgarity over the esotericism which gave man 
his last distinction. He joined his forces with the other two. 
They all three wanted her to go away. But she sat on in 
silence, her soul weeping, throbbing aia Le her fingers twist- 
ing her handkerchief. 


ili WOMEN IN LOVE 


The others maintained a dead silence, letting the display of 
Ursula’s obtrusiveness pass by. Then Gudrun asked, in a 
voice that was quite cool and casual, as if resuming a casual 
conversation: 

“Was the girl a model?” 

“Nein, sie war kein Modell. Sie war eine kleine Malschiil- 
erin.” 

“An art-student!” replied Gudrun. 

And how the situation revealed itself to her! She saw the 
girl art-student, unformed and of pernicious recklessness, too 
young, her straight flaxen hair cut short, hanging, just into 
her neck, curving inwards slightly, because it was rather thick; 
and Loerke, the well-known master-sculptor, and the girl, prob- 
ably well-brought-up, and of good family, thinking herself so 
great to be his mistress. Oh, how well she knew the common 
callousness of it all. Dresden, Paris, or London, what did it 
matter? She knew it. 

“Where is she now?” Ursula asked. 

Loerke raised his shoulders, to convey his complete ignor- 
ance and indifference. 

“That is already six years ago,” he said. “She will be 
twenty-three years old, no more good.” : 

Gerald had picked up the picture and was looking at it. It 
attracted him also. He saw on the pedestal, that the piece 
was called “Lady Godiva.” 

“But this isn’t Lady Godiva,” he said, smiling good-humour- 
edly. “She was the middle-aged wife of some Earl or other, 
who covered herself with her long hair.” 

“A la Maud Allan,” said Gudrun with a mocking grimace. 

“Why Maud Allan?” he replied. “Isn’t it so? I always 
thought the legend was that.” 

“Ves, Gerald dear, I’m quite sure you’ve got the legend 
perfectly. 

She was laughing at him, with a little, mock-caressive con- 
tempt. 

“To be sure, I’d rather see the woman than the hair,” he 
laughed in return. 

“Wouldn’t you just!” mocked Gudrun. 


CONTINENTAL 493 


Ursula rose and went away, leaving the three together. 

Gudrun tock the picture again from Gerald, and sat looking 
at it closely. 

“Of course,” she said, turning to tease Loerke now, “you 
understood your little Malschilerin.” 

He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders in a complacent 
shrug. 

“The little girl?” asked Gerald, pointing to the figure. 

Gudrun was sitting with the picture in her lap. She looked 
up at Gerald, full into his yes, so that he seemed to be blinded. 

“Didn’t he understand her!” she said to Gerald, in a slightly 
mocking, humourous playfulness. “You’ve only to look at 
the feet—eren’t they darling, so pretty and tender—oh, they’re 
really wonderful, they are really—” 

She lifted her eyes slowly, with a hot, flaming look into 
Loerke’s eyes. His soul was filled with her burning recogni- 
tion, he seemed to grow more uppish and lordly. 

Gerald looked at the small, sculptured feet. They were turned 
together, half covering each other in pathetic shyness and fear. 
He looked at them a long time, fascinated. Then, in some 
pain, he put the picture away from him. He felt full of bar- 
renness. 

“What was her name?” Gudrun asked Loerke. 

“Annette von Weck,” Loerke replied reminiscent. “Ja, sie 
war hiibsch. She was pretty—but she was tiresome. She was 
a nuisance,—not for a minute would she keep still—not until 
I’d slapped her hard and made her cry—then she’d sit for five 
minutes.” 

He was thinking over the work, his work, the all important 
to him, 

“Did you really slap her?” asked Gudrun, coolly. 

He glanced back at her, reading her challenge. 

“Ves, I did,” he said, nonchalant, “harder than I have ever 
beat anything in my life. I had to, I had to. It was the only 
way I got the work done.” 

Gudrun watched him with large, dark-filled eyes, for some 
moments. She seemed to be considering his very soul. Then 
she looked down in silence. 


494 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Why did you have such a young Godiva then?” asked 
Gerald. ‘She is so small, besides, on the horse—not big enough 
for it—such a child.” 

A queer spasm went over Loerke’s face. 

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them any bigger, any older. 
Then they are beautiful, at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—after 
that, they are no use to me.” 

There was a moment’s pause. 

“Why not?” asked Gerald. 

Loerke shrugged his shoulders. 

“T don’t find them interesting—or senutl Sukie bes are no 
good to me, for my work.” 

“Do you mean to say a woman isn’t beautiful after she is 
twenty?” asked Gerald. 

“For me, no. Before twenty, she is small and fresh and 
tender and slight. After that—let her be what she likes, she 
has nothing for me. The Venus of Milo is a bourgeoise—so 
are they all.” 

“And you don’t care for women at all after twenty?” asked 
Gerald. 

“They are no good to me, they are of no use in my art,” 
Loerke repeated impatiently. “I don’t find them beautiful.” 

“You are an epicure,” said Gerald, with a slight sarcastic 
laugh. 

“And what about men?” asked Gudrun suddenly. 

“Ves, they are good at all ages,” replied Loerke. “A man 
should be big and powerful—whether he is old or young is of 
no account, so he has the size, something of massiveness and 
—and stupid form.” 

Ursula went out alone into the world of pure, new snow. 
But the dazzling whiteness seemed to beat upon her till it 
hurt her, she felt the cold was slowly strangling her soul. Her 
head felt dazed and numb. 

Suddenly she wanted to go away. It occurred to her like 
a miracle, that she might go away into another world. She 
had felt so doomed up here in the eternal snow, as if there 


were no beyond. 
Now suddenly, as by a miracle she remembered that away 


CONTINENTAL 495 


beyond, below her, lay the dark fruitful earth, that towards 
the south there were stretches of land dark with orange trees 
and cypress, grey with olives, that ilex trees lifted wonder- 
ful plumy tufts in shadow against a blue sky. Miracle of 
miracles!—this utterly silent, frozen world of the mountain- 
tops was not universal! One might leave it and have done 
with it. One might go away. | 

She wanted to realise the miracle at once. She wanted at 
this instant to have done with the snow-world, the terrible, 
Static ice-built mountain-tops. She wanted to see the dark 
earth, to smell its earthly fecundity, to see the patient wintry 
vegetation,:to feel the sunshine touch a response in the buds. 

She went back gladly to the house, full of hope. Birkin was 
reading, lying in bed. 

“Rupert,” she said, bursting in on him. “I want to go 
away.” 

He looked up at her slowly. 

“Do you?” he replied mildly. 

She sat by him and put her arms round his neck. It sur- 
prised her that he was so little surprised. 

“Don’t you?” she asked troubled. 

“T hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “But I’m sure I do.” 

She sat up, suddenly erect. 

“T hate it,” she said. “I hate the snow, and the unnatural- 
ness of it, the unnatural light it throws on everybody, the 
ghastly glamour, the unnatural feelings it makes everybody 
have.” 

He lay still and laughed, meditating. 

“Well,” he said, “we can go away—we can go tomorrow. 
We'll go to-morrow to Verona, and be Romeo and Juliet, and 
sit in the amphitheatre—shall we?” 

Suddenly she hid her face against his shoulder with per- 
plexity and shyness. He lay so untrammelled. 

“Ves,” she said softly, filled with relief. She felt her soul 
had new wings, now he was so uncaring. “TI shall love to be 
Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “My love!” 

“Though a fearfully cold wind blows in Verona,” he said, 


496 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“from out of the Alps. We shall have the smell of the snow 
in our noses.” 

She sat up and looked at him. 

“Are you glad to go?” she asked, troubled. 

His eyes were inscrutable and laughing. She hid her face 
against his neck, clinging close to him, pleading: 

“Don’t laugh at me—don’t laugh at me.” 

“Why how’s that?” he laughed, putting his arms round her. 

“Because I don’t want to be laughed at,” she whispered. 

He laughed more, as he kissed her delicate, finely perfumed 
hair. 

“Do you love me?” she whispered, in wild seriousness. 

“Yes,” he answered, laughing. 

Suddenly she lifted her mouth to be kissed. Her lips were 
taut and quivering and strenuous, his were soft, deep and deli- 
cate. He waited a few moments in the kiss. Then a shade 
of sadness went over his soul. 

“Your mouth is so hard,” he said, in faint reproach. 

“And yours is so soft and nice,” she said gladly. 

“But why do you always grip your lips?” he asked, regretful. 

“Never mind,” she said swiftly. “It is my way.” 

She knew he loved her; she was sure of him. Yet she could 
not let go a certain hold over herself, she could not bear him 
to question her. She gave herself up in delight to being loved 
by him. She knew that, in spite of his joy when she aban- 
doned herself, he was a little bid saddened too. She could 
give herself up to his activity. But she could not be herself, 
she dared not come forth quite nakedly to his nakedness, 
abandoning all adjustment, lapsing in pure faith with him. 
She abandoned herself to Aim, or she took hold of him and 
gathered her joy of him. And she enjoyed him fully. But 
they were never quite together, at the same moment, one was 
always a little left out. Nevertheless, she was glad in hope, 
glorious and free, full of life and liberty. And he was still 
and soft and patient, for the time. 

They made their preparations to leave the next day. First 
they went to Gudrun’s room, where she and Gerald were just 
dressed ready for the evening indoors. 


Se Oa See 


CONTINENTAL 49” 


“Prune,” said Ursula, “I think we shall go away tomorrow. 
I can’t stand the snow any more. It hurts my skin and my 
soul.” 

“Does it really hurt your soul, Ursula?” asked Gudrun, in 
some surprise. “I can believe quite it hurts your skin—it is 
terrible. But I thought it was admirable for the soul.” 

“No, not for mine. It just injures it,” said Ursula. 

“Really!” cried Gudrun. 

There was a silence in the room. And Ursula and Birkin 
could feel that Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their 
going. 

“You will go south?” said Gerald, a little ring of uneasiness 
in his voice. 

“Yes,” said Birkin, turning away. There was a queer, in- 
definable hostility between the two men, lately. Birkin was 
on the whole dim and indifferent, drifting along in a dim, easy 
flow, unnoticing and patient, since he came abroad, whilst 
Gerald on the other hand, was intense and gripped into white 
light, agonistes. The two men revoked one another. 

Gerald and Gudrun were very kind to the two who were 
departing, solicitous for their welfare as if they were two 
children. Gudrun came to Ursula’s bedroom with three pairs 
of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious, and she 
threw them on the bed. But these were thick silk stockings, 
vermilion, cornflower blue, and grey, bought in Paris. The 
grey ones were knitted, seamless and heavy. Ursula was in 
raptures. She knew Gudrun must be feeling very loving, to 
give away such treasures. 

“I can’t take them from you, Prune,” she cried. “I can’t 
possibly deprive you of them—the jewels.” 

““Aren’t they jewels!” cried Gudrun, eying her gifts with 
an envious eye. “Aren’t they real lambs!” 

“Yes, you must keep them,” said Ursula. 

“T don’t want them, I’ve got three more pairs. I want you 
to keep them—I want you to have them. They’re yours, 
there—” 

And with trembling, excited hands she put the coveted stock- 
ings under Ursula’s pillow. 


498 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stock- 
ings,” said Ursula. 

“One does,” replied Gudrun, “the greatest joy of all.” 

And she sat down in the chair. It was evident she had come 
for a last talk. Ursula, not knowing what she wanted, waited 
in silence. 

“Do you feel, Ursula,” Gudrun began, rather sceptically, 
“that you are going-away-for-ever, never-to-return, sort of 
thing?” 

“Oh, we shall come back,” said Ursula. “It isn’t a ques- 
tion of train-journeys.”’ | 

“Yes, I know. But spiritually, so to speak, you are going 
away from us all?” 

Ursula quivered. 

“T don’t know a bit what is going to happen,” she said. “I 
only know we are going somewhere.” 

Gudrun waited. 

“And you are glad?” she asked. 

Ursula meditated for a moment. 

“T believe I am very glad,” she replied. 

But Gudrun read the unconscious brightness on her sister’s 
face, rather than the uncertain tones of her speech. 

“But don’t you think you'll want the old connection with 
the world—father and the rest of us, and all that it means, 
England and the world of thought—don’t you think you'll 
need that, really to make a world?” 

Ursula was silent, trying to imagine. 

“T think,” she said at length, involuntarily, “that Rupert 
is right—one wants a new space to be in, and one falls away 
from the old.” 

Gudrun watched her sister with impassive face and steady 
eyes. 
“One wants a new space to be in, I quite agree,” she said. 
“But J think that a new world is a development from this 
world, and that to isolate oneself with one other person, isn’t 
to find a new world at all, but only to secure oneself in one’s 
illusions.” | 

Ursula looked out of the window. In her soul she began to 


CONTINENTAL 499 


wrestle, and she was frightened. She was always frightened 
of words, because she knew that mere word-force could always 
make her believe what she did not believe. 

“Perhaps,” she said, full of mistrust, of herself and every- 
body. “But,” she added, “I do think that one can’t have any- 
thing new whilst one cares for the old—do you know what 
I mean?—even fighting the old is belonging to it. I know, 
one is tempted to stop with the world, just to fight it. But 
then it isn’t worth it.” 

Gudrun considered herself. 

“Yes,” she said. “In a way, one is of the world if one 
lives in it. But isn’t it really an illusion to think you can 
get out of it? After all, a cottage in the Abruzzi, or wherever 
it may be, isn’t a new world. No, the only thing to do with 
the world, is to see it through.” 

Ursula looked away. She was so frightened of argument. 

“But there can be something else, can’t there?” she said. 
“One can see it through in one’s soul, long enough before it 
sees itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen 
one’s soul, one is something else.” 

“Can one see it through in one’s soul?” asked Gudrun. “Tf 
you mean that you can see to the end of what will happen, I 
don’t agree. I really can’t agree. And anyhow, you can’t 
suddenly fly off on to a new planet, because you think you 
can see to the end of this.” 

Ursula suddenly straightened herself. 

“Ves,” she said. ‘‘Yes—one knows. One has no more 
connections here. One has a sort of other self, that belongs to 
a new planet, not to this. You’ve got to hop off.” 

Gudrun reflected for a few moments. Then a smile of ridi- 
cule, almost of contempt, came over her face. 

“And what will happen when you find yourself in space?” 
she cried in derision. ‘After all, the great ideas of the world 
are the same there. You above everybody can’t get away from 
the fact that love, for instance, is the supreme thing, in space 
as well as on earth.” 

“No,” said Ursula, “it isn’t. Love is too human and little. 
I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little 


500 WOMEN IN LOVE 


part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown 
to us, and it is something infinitely more than love. It isn’t 
so merely human.” 

Gudrun looked at Ursula with steady, balancing eyes. She 
admired and despiseri her sister so much, both! Then, sud- 
denly she averted her face, saying coldly, uglily: 

“Well, I’ve got no further than love, yet.” 

Over Ursula’s mind flashed the thought: “Because you 
never kave loved, you can’t get beyond it.” 

Gudrun rose, came over to Ursula and put her arm round 
her neck. . 

“Go and find your new world, dear,” she said, her voice 
clanging with false benignity. “After all, the happiest voyage 
is the quest of Rupert’s Blessed Isles.” 

Her arm rested round Ursula’s neck, her fingers on Ursula’s 
cheek for a few moments. Ursula was supremely uncomfort- 
able meanwhile. There was an insult in Gudrun’s protective 
patronage that was really too hurting. Feeling her sister’s re- 
sistance, Gudrun drew awkwardly away, turned over the pillow, 
and disclosed the stockings again. 

‘““Ha—ha!” she laughed, rather hollowly. “How we do talk 
indeed—new worlds and old—!” 

And they passed to the familiar worldly subjects. 

Gerald and Birkin had walked on ahead, waiting for the 
sledge to overtake them, conveying the departing guests. 

“How much longer will you stay here?” asked Birkin, 
glancing up at Gerald’s very red, almost blank face. 

“Oh, I can’t say,” Gerald reclined, “Till we get tired of it.” 

“You're not afraid of the snow melting first?” asked Birkin. 

Gerald laughed. 

“Does it melt?” he said. 

“Things are all right with you then?” said Birkin. 

Gerald screwed up his eyes a little. 

“All right?” he said. “I never know what those common 
words mean. All right and all wrong, don’t they become 
synonymous, somewhere?” 

“Yes, I suppose. How about going back?” asked Birkin. 


Ee eee 


CON TINENTAL 501 


“Oh, I don’t know. We may never get back. I don’t look 
before and after,” said Gerald. 

“Nor pine for what is not,” said Birkin. 

Gerald looked into the distance, with the small-pupilled, 
abstract eyes of a hawk. 

“No. There’s something final about this. And Gudrun 
seems like the end, to me. I don’t know—but she seems so 
soft, her skin like silk, her arms heavy and soft. And it 
withers my consciousness, somehow, it burns the pith of my 
mind.” He went on a few paces, staring ahead, his eyes fixed, 
looking like a mask used in ghastly religions of the barbarians. 
“Tt blasts your soul’s eye,” he said, “and leaves you sightless. 
Yet you went to be sightless, you want to be blasted, you don’t 
want it any different.” 

He was speaking as if in a trance, verbal and blank. Then 
suddenly he braced himself up with a kind of rhapsody, and 
looked at Birkin with vindictive, cowed eyes, saying: 

“Do you know what it is to suffer when you are with a 
woman? She’s so beautiful, so perfect, you find her se good, 
it tears you like a silk, and every stroke and bit cuts hot—ha, 
that perfection, when you blast yourself, you blast yourself! 
And then—” he stopped on the snow and suddenly opened his 
clenched hands—“it’s nothing—your brain might have gone 
charred as rags—and—” he looked round into the air with 
a queer histrionic movement—“it’s blasting—you understand 
what I mean—it is a great experience, something final—and 
then—you’re shrivelled as if struck by electricity.” He walked 
on in silence. It seemed like bragging, but like a man in ex- 
tremity bragging truthfully. 

“Of course,” he resumed, “I wouldn’t not have had it! It’s 
a complete experience. And she’s a wonderful woman. But— 
how I hate her somewhere! It’s curious—” 

Birkin looked at him, at his strange, scarcely conscious face. 
Gerald seemed blank before his own words. 

“But you’ve had enough now?” said Birkin. “You have had 
your experience. Why work on an old wound?” 

“Oh,” said Gerald, “I don’t know. It’s not finished—” 

And the two walked on. 


502 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“I’ve loved you, as well as Gudrun, don’t forget,” said Birkin 
bitterly. Gerald looked at him strangely, abstractedly. 

“Have your” he said, with icy scepticism. “Or do you 
think you have?” He was hardly responsible for what he 
said. 

The sledge came. Gudrun dismounted and they all made 
their farewell. They wanted to go apart, all of them. Birkin 
took his place, and the sledge drove away leaving Gudrun 
and Gerald standing on the snow, waving. Something froze 
Birkin’s heart, seeing them standing there in the isolation of 
the snow, growing smaller and more isolated. 


CHAPTER XXX 
SNOWED UP 


Wuen Ursula and Birkin were gone, Gudrun felt herself 
free in her contest with Gerald. As they grew more used to 
each other, he seemed to press upon her more and more. At 
first she could manage him, so that her own will was always 
left free. But very soon, he began to ignore her female tactics, 
he dropped his respect for her whims and her privacies, he 
began to exert his own will blindly, without submitting to hers. 

Already a vital conflict had set in, which frightened them 
both. But he was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast 
round for external resource. 

‘When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had 
become stark and elemental. She went and crouched alone 
in her bedroom, looking out of the window at the big, flashing 
stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain-knot. 
That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if 
she were centred upon the pivot of all existence, there was no 
further reality. 

Presently Gerald opened the door. She knew he would not 
be long before he came. She was rarely alone, he pressed upon 
her like a frost, deadening her. 

“Are you alone in the dark?” he said. And she could tell 
by his tone he resented it, he resented this isolation she had 
drawn round herself. Yet, feeling static and inevitable, she 
was kind towards him. | 

“Would you like to light the candle?” she asked. 

He did not answer, but came and stood behind her, in the 
darkness. 

“Look,” she said, “at that lovely star up there. Do you 
know its name?” 

He crouched beside her, to look through the low window. 

“No,” he said. “It is very fine.” 

503 


504 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“TIsw’t it beautiful! Do you notice how it darts different 
coloured fires—it flashes really superbly—” 

They remained in silence. With a mute, heavy gesture she 
put her hand on his knee, and took his hand. 

“Are you regretting Ursula?” he asked. 

“No, not at all,” she said. Then, in a slow mood, she asked: 

“How much do you love me?” 

He stiffened himself further against her. 

“How much do you think I do?” he asked. 

“T don’t know,” she replied. 

“But what is your opinion?” he asked. 

There was a pause. At length, in the darkness, came her 
voice, hard and indifferent: 

“Very little indeed,” she said coldly, almost flippant. 

His heart went icy at the sound of her voice. 

“Why don’t I love you?” he asked, as if admitting the 
truth of her accusation, yet hating her for it. 

“I don’t know why you don’t—I’ve been good to you. You 
were in a fearful state when you came to me.” 

Her heart was beating to suffocate her, yet she was strong 
and unrelenting. 

“When was I in a fearful state?” he asked. 

“When you first came to me. I had to take pity on you. 
But it was never love.” 

It was that statement “It was never love,” which sounded in 
his ears with madness. 

“Why must you repeat it so often, that there is no love?” 
he said in a voice strangled with rage. 

“Well you don’t think you love, do you?” she asked. 

He was silent with cold passion of anger. 

“You don’t think you can love me, do you?” she repeated 
almost with a sneer. 

“No,” he said. 

“You know you never have loved me, don’t you?” 

“T don’t know what you mean by the word ‘love,’ ” he replied. 

“Yes, you do. You know all right that you have never loved 
me. Have you, do you think?” 


SNOWED UP 505 


“No,” he said, prompted by some barren spirit of truthfulness 
and obstinacy. 

“And you never will love me,” she said finally, “will you?” 

There was a diabolic coldness in her, too much to bear. 

“No,” he said. 

“Then,” she replied, “what have you against me?” 

He was silent in cold, frightened rage and despair. “If only 
I could kill her,” his heart was whispering repeatedly. “If 
only I could kill her—I should be free.” 

It seemed to him that death was the only severing of this 
Gordian knot. 

“Why do you torture me?” he said. 

She flung her arms round his neck. 

“Ah, I don’t want to torture you,” she said ‘iyingly; as if 
she were comforting a child. The impertinence made his veins 
go cold, he was insensible. She held her arms round his neck, 
in a triumph of pity. And her pity for him was as cold as stone, 
its deepest motive was hate of him, and fear of his power 
over her, which she must always counterfoil. 

“Say you love me,” she pleaded.. “Say you will love me 
for ever—won’t you—won’t you?” 

But it was her voice only that coaxed him. Her senses 
were entirely apart from him, cold and destructive of him. 
It was her overbearing will that insisted. 

“Won’t you say you'll love me always?” she coaxed. “Say 
it, even if it isn’t true—say it Gerald, do.” 

“I will love you always,” he repeated, in real agony, forcing 
the words out. 


She gave him a quick kiss. 

“Fancy your actually having said it,” she said with a touch 
of raillery. 

He stood as if he had been beaten. 


“Try to love me a little more, and to want me a little less,” 
she said, in a half contemptuous, half coaxing tone. 

The darkness seemed to be swaying in waves across his 
mind, great waves of darkness plunging across his mind. It 
seemed to him he was Panga at the very quick, made of no 
account. 


506 WOMEN IN LOVE 


‘You mean you don’t want me?” he said. 

“You are so insistent, and there is so little grace in you, so 
little fineness. You are so crude. You break me—you only 
waste me—it is horrible to me.” 

“Horrible to you?” he repeated. 

“Yes. Don’t you think I might have a room to myself, now 
Ursula has gone? You can say you want a dressing-room.” 

“You do as you like—you can leave altogether if you like,” 
he managed to articulate. 

“Yes, I know that,” she replied. “So can you. You can 
leave me whenever you like—without notice even.” 

The great tides of darkness were swinging across his mind, 
he could hardly stand upright. A terrible weariness overcame 
him, he felt he must lie on the floor. Dropping off his clothes, 
he got into bed, and lay like a man suddenly overcome by 
drunkenness, the darkness lifting and plunging as if he were 
lying upon a black, giddy sea. He lay still in this strange, 
horrific reeling for some time, purely unconscious. 

At length she slipped from her own bed and came over to 
him. He remained rigid, his back to her. He was all but 
unconscious. 

She put her arms round his terrifying, insentient espa and 
laid her cheek against his hard shoulder. 

“Gerald,” she whispered. “Gerald.” 

There was no change in him. She caught him against her. 
She pressed her breasts against his shoulders, she kissed his 
shoulder, through the sleeping jacket. Her mind wondered, 
over his rigid, unliving body. She was bewildered, and insistent, 
only her will was set for him to speak to her. 

“Gerald, my dear!” she whispered, bending over him, kissing 
his ear. 

Her warm breath playing, flying rhythmically over his ear, 
seemed to relax the tension. She could feel his body gradually 
relaxing a little, losing its terrifying, unnatural rigidity. Her 
hands clutched his limbs, his muscles, going over him spas- 
modically. 

The hot blood hewati to flow again through his veins, his 
limbs relaxed. 


SNOWED UP 507 


“Turn round to me,” she whispered, forlorn with insistence 
and triumph. 

So at last he was given again, warm and flexible. He 
turned and gathered her in his arms. And feeling her soft 
against him, so perfectly and wondrously soft and recipient, his 
arms tightened on her. She was as if crushed, powerless in 
him. His brain seemed hard and invincible now like a jewel, 
there was no resisting him. 

His passion was awful to her, tense and ghastly, and imper- 
sonal, like a destruction, ultimate. She felt it would kill her. 
She was being killed. 

“My God, my God,” she cried, in anguish, in his embrace, 
feeling her life being killed within her. And when he was 
kissing her, soothing her, her breath came slowly, as if she 
were really spent, dying. 

“Shall I die, shall I die?” she repeated to herself. 

And in the night, and in him, there was no answer to the 
question. 

And yet, next day, the fragment of her which was not 
destroyed remained intact and hostile, she did not go away, 
she remained to finish the holiday, admitting nothing. He 
scarcely ever left her alone, but followed her like a shadow, 
_he was like a doom upon her, a continual “thou shalt,” “thou 
shalt not.” Sometimes it was he who seemed strongest, whilst 
she was almost gone, creeping near the earth like a spent 
wind; sometimes it was the reverse. But always it was this 
eternal see-saw, one destroyed that the other might exist, one 
ratified because the other was nulled. 

“In the end,” she said to herself, “I shall go away from him.” 

“I can be free of her,” he said to himself in his paroxysms 
of suffering. 

And he set himself to be free. He even prepared to go away, 
to leave her in the lurch. But for the first time there was a 
flaw in his will. 

“Where shall I go?” he asked himself. 

“Can’t you be self-sufficient?” he replied to himself, putting 
himself upon his pride. 

“Self-sufficient!” he repeated. 


508 WOMEN IN LOVE 


It seemed to him that Gudrun was sufficient unto herself, 
closed round and completed, like a thing in a case. In the 
calm, static reason of his soul, he recognised this, and admitted 
it was her right, to be closed round upon herself, self-complete, 
without desire. He realised it, he admitted it, it only needed 
one last effort on his own part, to win for himself the same 
completeness. He knew that it only needed one convulsion 
of his will for him to be able to turn upon himself also, to 
close upon himself as a stone fixes upon itself, and is imper- 
vious, self-completed, a thing isolated. . 

This knowledge threw him into a terrible chaos. Because, 
however much he might mentally will to be immune and 
self-complete, the desire for this state was lacking, and he 
could not create it. He could see that, to exist at all, he must 
be perfectly free of Gudrun, leave her if she wanted to be left, 
demand nothing of her, have no claim upon her. 

But then, to have no claim upon her, he must stand by 
himself, in sheer nothingness. And his brain turned to nought 
at the idea. It was a state of nothingness. On the other 
hand, he might give in, and fawn to her. Or, finally, he 
might kill her. Or he might become just indifferent, purpose- 
less, dissipated, momentaneous. But his nature was too serious, 
not gay enough or subtle enough for mocking licentiousness. 

A strange rent had been torn in him; like a victim that is 
torn open and given to the heavens, so he had been torn apart 
and given to Gudrun. How should he close again? This 
wound, this strange, infinitely-sensitive opening of his soul, 
where he was exposed, like an open flower, to all the universe, 
and in which he was given to his complement, the other, the 
unknown, this wound, this disclosure, this unfolding of his 
own covering, leaving him incomplete, limited, unfinished, like 
an open flower under the sky, this was his cruelest joy. Why 
then should he forego it. Why should he close up and become 
impervious, immune, like a partial thing in a sheath, when 
he had broken forth, like a seed that has germinated, to issue 
forth in being, embracing the unrealised heavens. 

He would keep the unfinished bliss of his own yearning 
even through the torture she inflicted upon him. A strange 


SNOWED UP 509 


obstinacy possessed him. He would not go away from her 
whatever she said or did. A strange, deathly yearning carried 
him along with her. She was the determinating influence of 
his very being, though she treated him with contempt, repeated 
rebufis, and denials, still he would never be gone, since in 
being near her, even, he felt the quickening, the going forth 
in him, the release, the knowledge of his own limitation and 
the magic of the promise, as well as the mystery of his own 
destruction and annihilation. 

She tortured the open heart of him even as he turned to her. 
And she was tortured herself. It may have been her will was 
stronger. She felt, with horror, as if he tore at the bud of 
her heart, tore it open, like an: irreverent persistent being. 
Like a boy who pulls off a fly’s wings, or tears open a bud to 
see what is in the flower, he tore at her privacy, at her very 
life, he would destroy her as an immature bud, torn open, is 
destroyed. 

She might open towards him, a long while hence, in her 
dreams, when she was a pure spirit. But now she was not 
to be violated and ruined. She closed against him fiercely. 

They climbed together, at evening, up the high slope, to 
see the sun set. In the finely breathing, keen wind they stood 
and watched the yellow sun sink in crimson and disappear. 
Then in the east the peaks and ridges glowed with living rose, 
incandescent like immortal flowers against a brown-purple sky, 
a miracle, whilst down below the world was a bluish shadow, 
and above, like an annunciation, hovered a rosy transport in 
mid air. 

To her it was so beautiful, it was a delirium, she wanted to 
gather the glowing, eternal peaks to her breast, and die. He 
saw them, saw they were beautiful. But there arose no 
clamour in his breast, only a bitterness that was visionary in 
itself. He wished the peaks were grey and unbeautiful, so 
that she should not get her support from them. Why did she 
betray the two of them so terribly, in embracing the glow of 
the evening? Why did she leave him standing there, with the 
ice-wind blowing through his heart, like death, to gratify 
herself among the rosy snow-tips? 


510 | WOMEN IN LOVE 


“What does the twilight matter?” he said. “Why do you 
grovel before it? Is it so important to you?” 

She winced in violation and in fury. 

“Go away,” she cried, “and leave me to it. It is beautiful, 
beautiful,” she sang in strange, rhapsodic tones. “It is the 
most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Don’t try 
to come between it and me. Take yourself away, you are 
out of place—” 

He stood back a little, and left her standing there, statue-like, 
transported into the mystic glowing east. Already the rose 
was fading, large white stars were flashing out. He waited. 
He would forego everything but the yearning. 

“That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen,” she said 
in cold, brutal tones, when at last she turned round to him. 
“It amazes me that you should want to destroy it. If you 
can’t see it yourself, why try to debar me?” But in reality, 
he had destroyed it for her, she was straining after a dead 
effect. 

“One day,” he said, softly, looking up at her, “I_ shall 
destroy vou, as you stand looking at the sunset; because you 
are such a liar.” 

There was a soft, voluptuous promise to himself in the words. 
She was chilled but arrogant. 

“Ha!” she said. “TI am not afraid of your threats!” 

She denied herself to him, she kept her room rigidly private 
to herself. But he waited on, in a curious patience, belonging 
to his yearning for her. 

“Tn the end,” he said to himself with real voluptuous promise, 
“when it reaches that point, I shall do away with her.” And 
he trembled delicately in every limb, in anticipation, as he 
trembled in his most violent accesses of passionate approach 
to her, trembling with too much desire. 

She had a curious sort of allegiance with Loerke, all the 
while, now something insidious and traitorous. Gerald knew 
of it. But in the unnatural state of patience, and the unwill- 
ingness to harden himself against her, in which he found 
himself, he took no notice, although her soft kindliness to the 
other man, whom he hated as a noxious insect, made him shiver 


SNOWED UP SII 


again with an access of the strange shuddering that came over 
him repeatedly. 

He left her alone only when he went ski-ing, a sport he loved, 
and which she did not practice. Then he seemed to sweep out 
of life, to be a projectile into the beyond. And often, when 
he went away, she talked to the little German sculptor. They 
had an invariable topic, in their art. 

They were almost of the same ideas. He hated Mestrovic, 
was not satisfied with the Futurists, he liked the West African 
wooden figures, the Aztec art, Mexican and Central American. 
He saw the grotesque, and a curious sort of mechanical motion 
intoxicated him, a confusion in nature. They had a curious 
game with each other, Gudrun and Loerke, of infinite sugges- 
tivity, strange and leering, as if they had some esoteric under- 
standing of life, that they alone were initiated into the fearful 
central secrets, that the world dared not know. Their whole 
correspondence was in a strange, barely comprehensible sug- 
gestivity, they kindled themselves at the subtle lust. of the 
Egyptians or the Mexicans. The whole game was one of 
subtle inter-suggestivity, and they wanted to keep it on the 
plane of suggestion. From their verbal and physical nuances 
they got the highest satisfaction in the nerves, from a queer 
interchange of half-suggested ideas, looks, expressions and 
gestures, which were quite intolerable, though incomprehensible, 
to Gerald. He had no terms in which to think of their 
commerce, his terms were much too gross. 

The suggestion of primitive art was their refuge, and the 
inner mysteries of sensation their object of worship. Art and 
Life were to them the Reality and the Unreality. 

“Of course,” said Gudrun, “life doesn’t really matter—it is 
one’s art which is central. What one does in one’s life has 
peu de rapport, it doesn’t signify much.” 

“Yes, that is so, exactly,” replied the sculptor. “What one 
does in one’s art, that is the breath of one’s being. What one 
does in one’s life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss 
about.” 

It was curious what a sense of elation and freedom Gudrun 
found in this communication. She felt established for ever. 


512 WOMEN IN LOVE 


Of course Gerald was bagatelle. Love was one of the temporal 
things in her life, except in so far as she was an artist. She 
thought of Cleopatra—Cleopatra must have been an artist; 
she reaped the essential from a man, she harvested the ultimate 
sensation, and threw away the husk; and Mary Stuart, and 
the great Rachel, panting with her lovers after the theatre, these 
were the exoteric exponents of love. After all, what was the 
lover but fuel for the transport of this subtle knowledge, for a 
female art, the art of pure, perfect knowledge in sensuous 
understanding. 

One evening Gerald was arguing with Loerke atbouie Italy 
and Tripoli. The Englishman was in a strange, inflammable 
state, the German was excited. It was a contest of words, but 
it meant a conflict of spirit between the two men. And all 
the while Gudrun could see in Gerald an arrogant English 
contempt for a foreigner. Although Gerald was quivering, his 
eyes flashing, his face flushed, in his argument there was a 
brusqueness, a savage contempt in his manner, that made 
Gudrun’s blood flare up, and made Loerke keen and mortified. 
For Gerald came down like a sledge-hammer with his assertions, 
anything the little German said was merely contemptible 
rubbish. 

At last Loerke turned to Gudrun, raising his hands in helpless 
irony, a shrug of ironical dismissal, something appealing and 
child-like. 

“Sehen sie, gnadige Frau—” he began. 

“Bitte sagen Sie nicht immer, gnidige Frau,” cried Gudrun, 
her eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. She looked like a vivid 
Medusa. Her voice was loud and clamorous, the other people 
in the room were startled. 

“Please don’t call me Mrs. Crich,” she cried aloud. 

The name, in Loerke’s mouth particularly, had been an 
intolerable humiliation and constraint upon her, these many 
days. 

The two men looked at her in amazement. Gerald went 
white at the cheek-bones. 

“What shall I say, then?” asked Loerke, with soft, mocking 
insinuation. 


SNOWED UP 513 


“Sagen Sie nur nicht das,” she muttered, her cheeks flushed 
«crimson. “Not that, at least.” 

She saw, by the dawning look on Loerke’s face, that he had 
venderstood. She was wot Mrs. Crich! So-o, that explained a 
great deal. 

“Soll ich Friulein sagen?” he asked, malevolently. 

“T am not married,” she said, with some hauteur. 

Her heart was fluttering now, beating like a bewildered bird. 
She knew she had dealt a cruel wound, and she could not bear 
it. 

Gerald sat erect, perfectly still, his face pale and calm, 
like the face of a statue. He was unaware of her, or of Loerke 
or anybody. He sat perfectly still, in an unalterable calm. 
Loerke, meanwhile, was crouching and glancing up from under 
his ducked head. 

Gudrun was tortured for something to say, to relieve the 
suspense. She twisted her face in a smile, and glanced 
knowingly, almost sneering, at Gerald. 

“Truth is best,” she said to him, with a grimace. 

But now again she was under his domination; now, because 
she had dealt him this blow; because she had destroyed him, 
and she did not know how he had taken it. She watched him. 
He was interesting to her. She had lost her interest in Loerke. 

Gerald rose at length, and went over in a leisurely still 
movement, to the professor. The two began a conversation on 
Goethe. 

She was rather piqued by the simplicity of Gerald’s de- 
meanour this evening. He did not seem angry or disgusted, 
only he looked curiously innocent and pure, really beautiful. 
Sometimes it came upon him, this look of clear distance, and 
it always fascinated her. 

She waited, troubled, throughout the evening. She thought 
he would avoid her, or give some sign. But he spoke to her 
simply and unemotionally, as he would to anyone else in the 
room. A certain peace, an abstraction possessed his soul. 

She went to his room, hotly, violently in love with him. He 
was so beautiful and inaccessible. He kissed her, he was a 
lover to her. And she had extreme pleasure of him. But he 


514 WOMEN IN LOVE 


did not come to, he remained remote and candid, unconscious. 
She wanted to speak to him. But this innocent, beautiful state 
of unconsciousness that had come upon him prevented her. 
She felt tormented and dark. 

In the morning, however, he looked at her with a little 
aversion, some horror and some hatred darkening into his 
eyes. She withdrew on to her old ground. But still he would 
not gather himself together, against her. 

Loerke was waiting for her now. The little artist, isolated 
in his own complete envelope, felt that here at last was a 
woman from whom he could get something. He was uneasy 
all the while, waiting to talk with her, subtly contriving to be 
near her. Her presence filled him with keenness and excite- 
ment, he gravitated cunningly towards her, as if she had some 
unseen force of attraction. ts 

He was not in the least doubtful of himself, as regards 
Gerald. Gerald was one of the outsiders. Loerke only hated 
him for being rich and proud and of fine appearance. All 
these things, however, riches, pride of social standing, hand- 
some physique, were externals. When it came to the relation 
with a woman suchas Gudrun, he, Loerke, had an approach 
and a power that Gerald never dreamed of. 

How should Gerald hope to satisfy a woman of Gudrun’s 
calibre? Did he think that pride or masterful will or physical 
strength would help him? Loerke knew a secret beyond these 
things. The greatest power is the one that is subtle and 
adjusts itself, not one which blindly attacks. And he, Loerke 
had understanding where Gerald was a calf. He, Loerke, could 
penetrate into depths far out of Gerald’s knowledge. Gerald 
was left behind like a postulant in the ante-room of this temple 
of mysteries, this woman. But he Loerke, could he not pene- 
trate into the inner darkness, find the spirit of the woman in its 
inner recess, and wrestle with it there, the central serpent 
that is coiled at the core of life? 

What was it, after all, that a woman wanted? Was it mere 
social effect, fulfilment of ambition in the social world, in the 
community of mankind? Was it even a union in love and 
goodness? Did she want “goodness”? Who but a fool would 


SNOWED UP 515 


accept this of Gudrun? This was but the street view of her 
wants. Cross the threshold, and you found her completely, 
completely cynical about the social world and its advantages. 

Once inside the house of her soul, and there was a pungent 
atmosphere of corrosion, an inflamed darkness of sensation, 
and a vivid, subtle, critical consciousness, that saw the world 
distorted, horrific. 

What then, what next? Was it sheer blind force of pas- 
sion that would satisfy her now? Not this, but the subtle 
thrills of extreme sensation in reduction. It was an unbroken 

_ will reacting against her unbroken will in a myriad subtle 
thrills of reduction, the last subtle activities of analysis and 
breaking down, carried out in the darkness of her, whilst 
the outside form, the individual, was utterly unchanged, even 
sentimental in its poses. 

But between two particular people, any two people on earth, 
the range of pure sensational experience is limited. The 
climax of sensual reaction, once reached in any direction, is 
reached finally, there is no going on. ‘There is only repetition 
possible, or the going apart of the two protagonists, or the 
subjugating of the one will to the other, or death. 

Gerald had penetrated all the outer places of Gudrun’s soul. 
He was to her the most crucial instance of the existing world, 
the ne plus ulira of the world of man as it existed for her. 
In him she knew the world, and had done with it. Knowing 
him finally she was the Alexander seeking new worlds. But 
there were no new worlds, there were no more men, there 
were only creatures, little, ultimate creatures like Loerke. The 
world was finished now, for her. ‘There was only the inner, 
individual darkness, sensation within the ego, the obscene 
religious mystery of ultimate reduction, the mystic frictional 
activities of diabolic reducing down, disintegrating the vital 
organic body of life. 

All this Gudrun knew in her subconsciousness, not in her 
mind. She knew her next step—she knew what she should 
move on to, when she left Gerald. She was afraid of Gerald, 
that he might kill her. But she did not intend to be killed. 
A fine thread still united her to him. It should not be ker 


516 WOMEN IN LOVE 


death which broke it. She had further to go, a further, slow 
exquisite experience to reap, unthinkable subtleties of sensa- 
tion to know, before she was finished. 

Of the last series of subtleties, Gerald was not capable. He 
could not touch the quick of her. But where his ruder blows 
could not penetrate, the fine, insinuating blade of Loerke’s 
insect-like comprehension could. At least, it was time for 
her now to pass over to the other, the creature, the final 
craftsman. She knew that Loerke, in his innermost soul, was 
detached from everything, for him there was.neither heaven 
nor earth nor hell. He admitted no allegiance, he gave no 
adherence anywhere. He was single and, by abstraction from 
the rest, absolute in himself. 

Whereas in Gerald’s soul there still lingered some attach- 
ment to the rest, to the whole. And this was his limitation. 
He was limited, borné, subject to his necessity, in the last issue, 
for goodness, for righteousness, for oneness with the ultimate 
purpose. That the ultimate purpose might be the perfect and 
subtle experience of the process of death, the will being kept 
unimpaired, that was not allowed in him. And this was his 
limitation. 

There was a hovering triumph in Loerke, since Gudrun had 
denied her marriage with Gerald. The artist seemed to hover 
like a creature on the wing, waiting to settle. He did not 
approach Gudrun violently, he was never ill-timed. But car- 
ried on by a sure instinct in the complete darkness of his soul, 
he corresponded mystically with her, imperceptibly, but pal- 
pably. 

For two days, he talked to her, continued the discussions 
of art, of life, in which they both found such pleasure. They 
praised the by-gone things, they took a sentimental, childish 
delight in the achieved perfections of the past. Particularly 
they liked the late eighteenth century, the period of Goethe 
and of Shelley, and Mozart. 

They played with the past, and with the great figures of 
the past, a sort of little game of chess, or marionettes, all to 
please themselves. They had all the great men for their 
marionettes, and they two were the God of the show, working 


——— 


SNOWED UP 517 


it all. As for the future, that they never mentioned except one 
laughed out some mocking dream of the destruction of the 
world by a ridiculous catastrophe of man’s invention: a man 
invented such a perfect explosive that it blew the earth in 
_ two, and the two halves set off in different directions through 
_ space, to the dismay of the inhabitants: or else the people of 
the world divided into two halves, and each half decided it was 
perfect and right, the other half was wrong and must be de- 
stroyed; so another end of the world. Or else, Loerke’s dream 
of fear, the world went cold, and snow fell everywhere, and 
only white creatures, polar-bears, white foxes, and men like 
awful white snow-birds, persisted in ice cruelty. 

Apart from these stories, they never talked of the future. 
They delighted most either in mocking imaginations of destruc- 
tion, or in sentimental, fine marionette-shows of the past. It 
was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the world of Goethe 
at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or 
to see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Fer- 
ney, or Frederick the Great reading his own poetry. 

They talked together for hours, of literature and sculpture 
and painting, amusing themselves with Flaxman and Blake 
and Fuseli with tenderness, and with Feuerbach and Bock- 
lin. It would take them a life-time, they felt,’to live again 
in petto the lives of the great artists. But they preferred to 
stay in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. 

They talked in a mixture of languages. The ground-work 
was French, in either case. But he ended most of his sentences 
in a stumble of English and a conclusion of German, she 
skilfully wove herself to her end in whatever phrase came to 
her. She took a peculiar delight in this conversation. It was 
full of odd, fantastic expression, of double meanings, of eva- 
sions, of suggestive vagueness. It was a real physical pleasure 
to her to make this thread of conversation out of the different- 
coloured strands of three languages. 

And all the while they two were hovering, hesitating round 
the flame of some invisible declaration. He wanted it, but 
was held back by some inevitable reluctance. She wanted it 
also, but she wanted to put it off, to put it off indefinitely, she 


518 WOMEN IN LOVE 


still had some pity for Gerald, some connection with him. 
And the most fatal of all, she had the reminiscent sentimental 
compassion for herself in connection with him. Because of 
what had been, she felt herself held to him by immortal, invis- 
ible threads—because of what had been, because of his coming 
to her that first night, into her own house, in his extremity, 
because— 

Gerald was gradually overcome with a revulsion of loathing 
for Loerke. He did not take the man seriously, he despised 
him merely, except as he felt in Gudrun’s veins the influence 
of the little creature. It was this that drove Gerald wild, the 
feeling in Gudrun’s veins of Loerke’s presence, Loerke’s being, 
flowing dominant through her. 

“What makes you so smitten with that little vermin?” he 
asked, really puzzled. For he, man-like, could not see anything 
attractive or important af all in Loerke. Gerald expected to 
find some handsomeness or nobleness, to account for a woman’s 
subjection. But he saw none here, only an insect-like repul- 
siveness. 

Gudrun flushed deeply. It was these attacks she would 
never forgive. 

“What do you mean?” she replied. “My God, what a 
mercy I am not married to you!” 

Her voice of flouting and contempt scotched him. He was 
brought up short. But he recovered himself. 

‘Tell me, only tell me,” he reiterated in a dangerous nar- 
rowed voice— “tell me what it is that fascinates you in him.” 

“T am not fascinated,” she said, with cold repelling inno- 
cence. 

“Ves, you are. You are fascinated by that little dry snake, 
Jike a bird gaping ready to fall down its throat.” 

She looked at him with black fury. 

“TI don’t choose to be discussed by you,” she said. 

“Tt doesn’t matter whether you choose or not,” he replied, 
“that doesn’t alter the fact that you are ready to fall down 
and kiss the feet of that little insect. And I don’t want to 
prevent you—do it, fall down and kiss his feet. But I want 
to know, what it is that fascinates you—what is it?” 


SNOWED UP 519 


She was silent, suffused with black rage. 

“How dare you come brow-beating me,” she cried, “how 
dare you, you little squire, you bully. What right have you 
over me, do you think?” 

His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in 
his eyes that she was in his power—the wolf. And because 
she was in his power, she hated him with a force that she 
wondered did not kill him. In her will she killed him as he 
stood, effaced him. 

“Tt is not a question of right,” said Gerald, sitting down 
on a chair. She watched the change in his body. She saw 
his clenched, mechanical body moving there like an obsession. 
Her hatred of him was tinged with fatal contempt. 

“Tt’s not a question of my right over you—though I have 
some right, remember. I want to know, I only want to know 
what it is that subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor 
downstairs, what it is that brings you down like a humble 
maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you creep 
after.” 

She stood over against the window, listening. Then she 
turned round. 

“Do you?” she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. 
“Do you want to know what it is in him? It’s because he has 
some understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid. 
That’s why it is.” 

A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald’s face. 

“But what understanding is it?” he said. “The understand- 
ing of a flea, a hopping flea with a proboscis. Why should you 
crawl abject before the understanding of a flea?” 

There passed through Gudrun’s mind Blake’s representation 
of the soul of a flea. She wanted to fit it to Loerke. Blake 
was a clown too. But it was necessary to answer Gerald. 

“Don’t you thing the understanding of a flea is more inter- 
esting than the understanding of a fool?” she asked. 

“A fool!” he repeated. 

“A fool, a conceited fool—a Dummkopf,”’ she hii adding 
the German word. 


520 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“Do you call me a fool?” he replied. “Well, wouldn’t I 
rather be the fool I am, than that flea downstairs?” 

She looked at him. A certain blunt, blind stupidity in him 
palled on her soul, limiting her. 

“You give yourself away by that last,” she said. 

He sat and wondered. 

“T shall go away soon,” he said. 

She turned on him. 

“Remember,” she said, “I am completely independent of 
you—completely. You make your arrangements, I make 
mine.” 

He pondered this. 

“You mean we are strangers from this minute?” ke asked. 

She halted and flushed. He was putting her in a trap, 
forcing her hand. She turned round on him. 

“Strangers,” she said, “we can never be. But if you want 
to make any movement apart from me, then I wish you to 
know you are perfectly free to do so. Do not consider me in 
the slightest.” 

Even so slight an implication that she needed him and was 
depending on him still was sufficient to rouse his passion. As 
he sat a change came over his body, the hot, molten stream 
mounted involuntarily through his veins. He groaned in- 
wardly, under its bondage, but he loved it. He looked at her 
with clear eyes, waiting for her. 

She knew at once, and was shaken with cold revulsion. How 
could he look at her with those clear, warm, waiting eyes, wait- 
ing for her, even now? What had been said between them, 
was it not enough to put them worlds asunder, to freeze them 
forever apart! And yet he was all transfused and roused, 
waiting for her. 

It confused her. Turning her head aside, she said: 

“T shall always tell you, whenever I am going to make any 
change—” 

And with this she moved out of the room. 

He sat suspended in a fine recoil of disappointment, that 
seemed gradually to be destroying his understanding. But 
the unconscious state of patience persisted in him. He re- 


SNOWED UP 521 


mained motionless, without thought or knowledge, for a long 
time. Then he rose, and went downstairs, to play at chess 
with one of the students. His face was open and clear, with 
a certain innocent Jaisser-aller that troubled Gudrun most, 
made her almost afraid of him, whilst she disliked him deeply 
for it. 

It was after this that Loerke, who had never yet spoken to 
her personally, began to ask her of her state. 

“You are not married at all, are you?” he asked. 

- She looked full at him. 

“Not in the least,” she replied, in her measured way. Loerke 
laughed, wrinkling up his face oddly. There was a thin wisp 
of his hair straying on his forehead, she noticed that his skin 
was of a clear brown colour, his hands, his wrists. And his 
hands seemed closely prehensile. He seemed like topaz, so 
strangely brownish and pegged 

“Good,” he said. 

Still it needed some courage for him to go on. 

“Was Mrs. Birkin your sister?” he asked. 

“Ves,” 

“And was she married?” 

“She was married.” 

“Have you parents, then?” 

“Yes,” said Gudrun, “we have parents.” 

And she told him, briefly, laconically, her position. He 
watched her closely, curiously all the while. 

“So!” he exclaimed, with some surprise. ‘And the Herr 
Crich, is he rich?” 

“Yes, he is rich, a coal owner.” 

“How long has your friendship with him lasted?” 

“Some months.” 

There was a pause. 

“Yes, I am surprised,” he said at length. “The English, I 
thought they were so—cold. And what do you think to do 
when you leave here?” 

“What do I think to do?” she repeated. 

“Ves. You cannot go back to the teaching. No—” he 
shrugged his shoulders—“that is impossible. Leave that to 


’ 


522 WOMEN IN LOVE 


the canaile who can do nothing else. You, for your part— 
you know, you are a remarkable woman, eine seltsame Frau. 
Why deny it—why make any question of it? You are an ex- 
traordinary woman, why should you follow the ordinary course, 
the ordinary life?” 

. Gudrun sat looking at her hands, flushed. She was pleased 
that he said, so simply, that she was a remarkable woman. 
He would not say that to flatter her—he was far too self- 
opinionated and objective by nature. He said it as he would 
say a piece of sculpture was remarkable, because he knew it 
was so. 

And it gratified her to hear it from him. Other people had 
such a passion to make everything of ene degree, of one pat- 
tern. In England it was chic to be perfectly ordinary. And 
it was.a relief to her to be acknowledged extraordinary. 
Then she need not fret about the common standards. 

“You see,” she said, “I have no money whatsoever.” 

“Ach, money!” he cried, lifting his shoulders. “When one 
is grown up, money is lying about at one’s service. It is 
only when one is young that it is rare. Take no thought for 
money—that always lies to hand.” . 

“Toes it?” she said, laughing. 

“Always. Der Gerald will give you a sum, if you ask him 
for it—” 

She flushed deeply. 

“TI will ask anybody else,” she said, with some difficulty— 
“but not him.” 

Loerke looked closely at her. 

“Good,” he said. “Then let it be somebody else. Only don’t 
go back to that England, that school. No, that is stupid.” 

Again there was a pause. He was afraid to ask her out- 
right to go with him, he was not even quite sure he wanted 
her; and she was afraid to be asked. He begrudged his own 
isolation, was very chary of sharing his life, even for a day. 

“The only other place I know is Paris,” she said, “and I 
can’t stand that.” 

She looked with her wide, steady eyes full at Loerke. He 
lowered his head and averted his face. 


SNOWED UP 523 


“Paris, no!” he said. ‘Between the religion d’amour, and 
the latest ’ism, and the new turning to Jesus, one had better 
ride on a carrousel all day. But come to Dresden. I have a 
studio there—I can give you work—oh, that would be easy 
enough. I haven’t seen any of your things, but I believe in 
you. Come to Dresden—that is a fine town to be in, and as 
good a life as you can expect of a town. You have everything 
there, without the foolishness of Paris or the beer of Munich.” 

He sat and looked at her, coldly. What she liked about him 
was that he spoke to her simple and flat, as to himself. He 
was a fellow craftsman, a fellow being to her, first. 

“No—Paris,” he resumed, “it makes me sick. Pah— 
Vamour. I detest it. L’amour, l'amour, die Liebe—I detest 
it in every language. Women and love, there is no greater 
tedium,” he cried. 

She was slightly offended. And yet, this was her own basic 
feeling. Men, and love—there was no greater tedium. 

“T think the same,” she said. 

“A bore,” he repeated. ‘What does it matter whether I 
wear this hat or another? So love. I needn’t wear a hat at 
all, only for convenience. Neither need I love except for con- 
venience. I tell you what, gnadige Frau—” and he leaned 
towards her—then he made a quick, odd gesture, as of strik- 
ing something aside—“gnadige Fraulein, never mind—I tell 
you what, I would give everything, everything, all your love, 
for a little companionship in intelligence—” his eyes flickered 
darkly, evilly at her. ‘You understand?” he asked, with a 
faint smile. “It wouldn’t matter if she were a hundred years 
old, a thousand—it would be all the same to me, so that she 
can understand.” He shut his eyes with a little snap. 

Again Gudrun was rather offended. Did he not think her 
good-looking, then? Suddenly she laughed. 

“T shall have to wait about eighty years to suit you, at that,” 
she said. “I am ugly enough, aren’t I?” 

He looked at her with an artist’s sudden, critical, estimat- 
ing eye. 

“You are beautiful,” he said, “and I am glad of it. But 
it isn’t that—it isn’t that,” he cried, with emphasis that flat- 


524 WOMEN IN LOVE 


tered her. “It is that you have a certain wit, it is the kind 
of understanding. For me, I am little, chétif, insignificant. 
Good! Do not ask me to be strong and handsome, then. But 
it is the me—” he put his fingers to his mouth, oddly—“it is 
the me that is looking for a mistress, and my me is waiting 
for the thee of the mistress, for the match to my particular 
intelligence. You understand?” 

“Yes,” she said, “I understand.” 

“As for the other, this amour—” he made a gesture, dash- 
ing his hand aside, as if to dash away something troublesome 
—‘it is unimportant, unimportant. Does it matter, whether 
I drink white wine this evening, or whether I drink nothing? 
It does not matter, it does not matter. So this love, this 
amour, this baiser. Yes or no, soit ou soit pas, to-day, to- 
morrow, or never, it is all the same, it does not matter—no 
more than the white wine.” 

He ended with an odd dropping of the head in a desperate 
negation. Gudrun watched him steadily. She had gone pale. 

Suddenly she stretched over and seized his hand in her own. 

“That is true,” she said, in rather a high, vehement voice, 
“that is true for me too. It is the understanding that matters.” 

He looked up at her almost frightened, furtive. Then he 
nodded, a little sullenly. She let go his hand: he had made 
not the lightest response. And they sat in silence. 

“Do you know,” he said, suddenly looking at her with dark, 
self-important, prophetic eyes, “your fate and mine, they will 
run together, till—” and he broke off in a little grimace. 

“Till when?” she asked, blanched, her lips going white. She 
was terribly susceptible to these evil prognostications, but he 
only shook his head. 

“T don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know.” 

Gerald did not come in from his ski-ing until nightfall, he 
missed the coffee and cake that she took at four o’clock. The 
snow was in perfect condition, he had travelled a long way, 
by himself, among the snow ridges, on his skis, he had climbed 
high, so high that he could see over the top of the pass, five 
miles distant, could see the Marienhitte, the hostel on the 
crest of the pass, half buried in snow, and over into the deep. 


SNOWED UP 525 


valley beyond, to the dusk of the pine trees. One could go 
that way home but he shuddered with nausea at the thought 
of home;—one could travel on skis down there, and come to — 
the old imperial road, below the pass. But why come to any 
road. He revolted at the thought of finding himself in the 
world again. He must stay up there in the snow forever. He 
had been happy by himself, high up there alone, travelling 
swiftly on skis, taking far flights, and skimming past the dark 
rocks veined with brilliant snow. 

But he felt something icy gathering at his heart. This 
strange mood of patience and innocence which had persisted 
in him for some days, was passing away, he would be left again 
a prey to the horrible passions and tortures. 

So he came down reluctantly, snow-burned, snow-estranged, 
to the house in the hollow, between the knuckles of the moun- 
tain tops. He saw its lights shining yellow, and he held back, 
wishing he need not go in, to confront those people, to hear 
the turmoil of voices and to feel the confusion of other pres- 
ences. He was isolated as if there were a vacuum round his 
heart, or a sheath of pure ice. 

The moment he saw Gudrun something jolted in his soul. 
She was looking rather lofty and superb, smiling slowly and 
graciously to the Germans. A sudden desire leapt in his heart, 
to kill her. He thought, what a perfect voluptuous fulfilment 
it would be, to kill her. His mind was absent all the evening, 
estranged by the snow and his passion. But he kept the idea 
constant within him, what a perfect voluptuous consumma- 
tion it would be to strangle her, to strangle every spark of life 
out of her, till she lay completely inert, soft, relaxed for ever, 
a soft heap lying dead between his hands, utterly dead. Then 
he would have had her finally and for ever; there would be such 
a perfect voluptuous finality. 

Gudrun was unaware of what he was feeling, he seemed so 
quiet and amiable, as usual. His amiability even made her 
feel brutal towards him. 

She went into his room when he was partially undressed. 
She did not notice the curious, glad gleam of pure hatred, with 


526 WOMEN IN LOVE 


which he looked at her. She stood near the door, with her 
hand behind her. 

“T have been thinking, Gerald,” she said, with an insulting 
nonchalance, “that I shall not go back to England.” 

“Oh,” he said, “where will you go then?” 

But she ignored his question. She had her own logical state- 
ment to make, and it must be made as she had thought it. 

“T can’t see the use of going back,” she continued. “It is 
over between me and you—” 

She paused for him to speak. But he said nothing. He was 
only talking to himself, saying: “Over, is it? I believe it is 
over. But it isn’t finished. Remember, it isn’t finished. We 
must put some sort of a finish on it. There must be a con- 
clusion, there must be finality.” 

So he talked to himself, but aloud he said nothing whatever. 

“What has been, has been,” she continued. “There is noth- 
ing that I regret. I hope you regret nothing—” 

She waited for him to speak. 

“Oh, I regret nothing,” he said, accommodatingly. 

“Good then,” she answered, “good then. Then neither of 
us cherishes any regrets, which is as it should be.” 

“Quite as it should be,” he said aimlessly. 

She paused to gather up her thread again. 

“Our attempt has been a failure,” she said. "hee we can 
try again, elsewhere.” 

A little flicker of rage ran through his blood. it was as if 
she were rousing him, goading him. Why must she do it? 

“Attempt at what?” he asked. 

“At being lovers, I suppose,” she said, a little baffled, yet so 
trivial she made it all seem. 

“Our attempt at being lovers has been a failure?” he re- 
peated aloud. 

To himself he was saying: “I ought to kill her here. There 
is only this left, for me to kill her.” A heavy, overcharged 
desire to bring about her death possessed him. She was un- 
aware. 

“Hlasn’t it?” she asked. “Do you think it has been a suc- 
cess?” 


SNOWED UP 527 


Again the insult of the flippant question ran through his 
blood like a current of fire. 

“It had some of the elements of success, our relationship,” 
he replied. “It—might have come off.” 

But he paused before concluding the last phrase. Even as 
he began the sentence, he did not believe in what he was go- 
ing to say. He knew it never could have been a success. 

“No,” she replied. ‘You cannot love.” 

“And you?” he asked. 

Her wide, dark-filled eyes were fixed on him, like two moons 
of darkness. 

“T couldn’t love you,” she said, with stark cold truth. 

A blinding flash went over his brain, his body jolted. His 
heart had burst into flame. His consciousness was gone into 
his wrists, into his hands. He was one blind, incontinent de- 
sire, to kill her. His wrists were bursting, there would be no 
satisfaction till his hands had closed on her. 

But even before his body swerved forward on her, a sud- 
den, cunning comprehension was expressed on her face, and 
in a flash she was out of the door. She ran in one flash to 
her room and locked herself in. She was afraid, but confident. 
She knew her life trembled on the edge of an abyss. But she 
was curiously sure of her footing. She knew her cunnirig could 
outwit him. 

She trembled, as she stood in her room, with excitement and 
awful exhilaration. She knew she could outwit him. She 
could depend on her presence of mind, and on her wits. But 
it was a fight to the death, she knew it now. One slip, and 
she was lost. She had a strange, tense, exhilarated sickness 
in her body, as one who is in peril of falling from a great 
height, but who does not look down, does not admit the fear. 

“T will go away the day after to-morrow,” she said. 

She only did not want Gerald to think that she was afraid of 
him, that she was running away because she was afraid of 
him. She was not afraid of him, fundamentally. She knew 
it was her safeguard to avoid his physical violence. But even 
physically she was not afraid of him. She wanted to prove it 
to him. When she had proved it, that, whatever he was, she 


528 WOMEN IN LOVE 


was not afraid of him; when she had proved that, she could 
leave him for ever. But meanwhile the fight between them, 
terrible as she knew it to be, was inconclusive. And she wanted 
to be confident in herself. However many terrors she might 
have, she would be unafraid, uncowed by him. He could never 
cow her, nor dominate her, nor have any right over her; this 
she would maintain until she had proved it. Once it was 
proved, she was free of him for ever. 

But she had not proved it yet, neither to him nor to her- 
self. And this was what still bound her to him. She was 
bound to him, she could not live beyond him. She sat up in 
bed, closely wrapped up, for many hours, thinking endlessly 
to herself. It was as if she would never have done weaving the 
great provision of her thoughts. 

“Tt isn’t as if he really loved me,” she said to herself. ‘He 
doesn’t. Every woman he comes across he wants to make 
her in love with him. He doesn’t even know that he is doing 
it. But there he is, before every woman he unfurls his male 
attractiveness, displays his great desirability, he tries to make 
every woman think how wonderful it would be to have him for 
a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. 
He is never unconscious of them. He should have been a 
cockerel, so he could strut before fifty females, all his sub- 
jects. But really, his Don Juan does not interest me. I could 
play Dona Juanita a million times better than he plays Juan. 
He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing is 
so boring as his sort of love, so inherently stupid and stupidly 
conceited. Really, the fathomless conceit of these men, it is 
ridiculous—the little strutters. 

“They are all alike. Look at Birkin. Built out of the 
limitation of conceit they are, and nothing else. Really, noth- 
ing but their ridiculous limitation and intrinsic insignificance 
could make them so conceited. 

“As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him 
than in a Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to 
him. He would grind on at the old mills forever. And really, 
there is no corn between the millstones any more. They grind 
on and on, when there is nothing to grind—saying the same 


SNOWED UP 529 


things, believing the same things, acting the same things. Oh, 
my God, it would wear out the patience of a stone. 

“T don’t worship Loerke, but at any rate, he is a free indi- 
vidual. He is not stiff with conceit of his own maleness. He 
is not grinding dutifully at the old mills. Oh God, when I 
_ think of Gerald, and his work—those offices at Beldover, and 
the mines—it makes my heart sick. What save I to do with 
it—and him thinking he can be a lover to a woman! One 
might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post. These men, 
with their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God that 
keep on grinding at nothing! It is too boring, just boring. 
However did I come to take him seriously at all! 

“At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all. And 
there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing to go 
to these eurythmic displays, and the German opera, the Ger- 
man theatre. It will be amusing to take part in German 
Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. 
One will escape from so much, that is the chief thing, escape 
so much hideous boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar 
phrases, vulgar postures. I don’t delude myself that I shall 
find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know I shan’t. But I shall 
get away from people who have their own homes and their 
own children and their own acquaintances and their own this 
and their own that. I shall be among people who don’t own 
things and who haven’t got a home and a domestic servant in 
the background, who /aven’t got a standing and a status and 
a degree and a circle of friends of the same. Oh God, the 
wheels within wheels of people, it makes one’s head tick like 
a clock, with a very madness of dead mechanical monotony 
and meaninglessness. How I hate life, how I hate it. How 
I hate the Geralds, that they can offer one nothing else. 

“Shortlands!—Heavens! Think of living there, one week, 
then the next, and then the third— 

“No, I won’t think of it—it is too much—” 

And she broke off, really terrified, really unable to bear 
any more. 

The thought of the mechanical succession of day following 
day, day following day, ad infinitum, was one of the things 


530 WOMEN IN LOVE 


that made her heart palpitate with a real approach of mad- 
ness. The terrible bondage of this tick-tack of time, this 
twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of 
hours and days—oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. — 
And there was no escape from it, no escape. 

She almost wished Gerald were with her to save her from 
the terror of her own thoughts. Oh, how she suffered, lying — 
there alone, confronted by the terrible clock, with its eternal 
tick-tack. All life, all life resolved itself into this: tick-tack, 
tick-tack, tick-tack; then the striking of the hour; then the 
tick-tack, tick-tack, and the twitching of the clock-fingers. 2 

Gerald could not save her from it. He, his body, his © 
motion, his life—it was the same ticking, the same twitching 
across the dial, a horrible mechanical twitching forward over 
the face of the hours. What were his kisses, his embraces. 
She could hear their tick-tack, tick-tack. 

Ha—ha—she laughed to herself, so frightened that she was 
trying to laugh it off—ha—ha, how maddening it was, to be 
sure, to be sure! . 

Then, with a fleeting self-conscious motion, she wondered 
if she would be very much surprised, on rising in the morning, 
to realise that her hair had turned white. She had felt it turn- 
ing white so often, under the intolerable burden of her thoughts, 
and her sensations. Yet there it remained, brown as ever, and 
there she was herself, looking a picture of health. 

Perhaps she was healthy. Perhaps it was only her un- — 
abatable health that left her so exposed to the truth. If she 
were sickly she would have her illusions, imaginations. As it 
was, there was no escape. She must always see and know and ~ 
never escape. She could never escape. There she was, placed 
before the clock-face of life. And if she turned round as in a 
railway station, to look at the book-stall, still she could see, © 
with her very spine, she could see the clock, always the great — 
white clock-face. In vain she fluttered the leaves of books, or 
made statuettes in clay. She knew she was not really read- 
ing. She was not really working. She was watching the 
fingers twitch across the eternal, mechanical, monotonous 
clock-face of time. She never really lived, she only watched. 


SNOWED UP 531 


Indeed, she was like a little, twelve-hour clock, vis-a-vis with 
the enormous clock of eternity—there she was, like Dignity 
and Impudence, or Impudence and Dignity. | 

The picture pleased her. Didn’t her face really look like 
a clock dial—rather roundish and often pale, and impassive. 
She would have got up to look, in the mirror, but the thought 
of the sight of her own face, that was like a twelve-hour clock- 
dial, filled her with such deep terror, that she hastened to think 
of something else. 

Oh, why wasn’t somebody kind to her? Why wasn’t there 
somebody who would take her in their arms, and hold her to 
their breast, and give her rest, pure, deep, healing rest. Oh, 
why wasn’t there somebody to take her in their arms and fold 
her safe and perfect, for sleep. She wanted so much this per- 
fect enfolded sleep. She lay always so unsheathed in sleep. 
She would lie always unsheathed in sleep, unrelieved, unsaved. 
Oh, how could she bear it, this endless unrelief, this eternal 
unrelief, 

Gerald! Could he fold her in his arms and sheathe her in 
sleep? Ha! He needed putting to sleep himselfi—poor Ger- 
ald. That was all he needed. What did he do, he made the 
burden for her greater, the burden of her sleep was the more 
intolerable, when he was there. He was an added weariness 
upon her unripening nights, her unfruitful slumbers. Perhaps 
he got some repose from her. Perhaps he did. Perhaps this 
was what he was always dogging her for, like a child that is 
famished, crying for the breast. Perhaps this was the secret 
of his passion, his for ever unquenched desire for her—that he 
needed her to put him to sleep, to give him repose. 

What then! Was she his mother? Had she asked for a 
child, whom she must nurse through the nights, for her lover. 
She despised him, she despised him, she hardened her heart. 
An infant crying in the night, this Don Juan. 

O-oh, but how she hated the infant crying in the night. She 
would murder it gladly. She would stifle it and bury it, as 
Hetty Sorrell did. No doubt Hetty Sorrell’s infant cried in 
the night—no doubt Arthur Donnithorne’s infant would. Ha 
—the Arthur Donnithornes, the Geralds of this world. So 


532 WOMEN IN LOVE 


manly by day, yet all the while, such a crying of infants in the 
night. Let them turn into mechanisms, let them. Let them 
become instruments, pure machines, pure wills, that work like 
clock-work, in perpetual repetition. Let them be this, let them 
be taken up entirely in their work, let them be perfect parts 
of a great machine, having a slumber of constant repetition. 
Let Gerald manage his firm. - There he would be satisfied, as 
satisfied as a wheelbarrow that goes backwards and forwards 
along a plank all day—she had seen it. 

The wheel-barrow—the one humble wheel—the unit of the 
firm. Then the cart, with two wheels; then the truck, with 
four; then the donkey-engine, with eight, then the winding- 
engine, with sixteen, and so on, till it came to the miner, with 
a thousand wheels, and then the electrician, with three thou- 
sand, and the underground manager, with twenty-thousand, 
and the general manager with a hundred thousand little wheels 
working away to complete his make-up, and then Gerald, with 
a million wheels and cogs and axles. 

Poor Gerald, such a lot of little wheels to his make-up! He 
was more intricate than a chronometer-watch. But oh heav- 
ens, what weariness! What weariness, God above! A chro- 
nometer-watch—a beetle—her soul fainted with utter ennui, 
from the thought. So many wheels to count and consider and 
calculate! Enough, enough—there was an end to man’s ca- 
pacity for complications, even. Or perhaps there was no end. 

Meanwhile Gerald sat in his room, reading. When Gudrun 
was gone, he was left stupefied with arrested desire. He sat 
on the side of the bed for an hour, stupefied, little strands of 
consciousness appearing and reappearing. But he did not 
move, for a long time he remained inert, his head dropped on 
his breast. 

Then he looked up and realised that he was going to bed. 
He was cold. Soon he was lying down in the dark. 

But what he could not bear was the darkness. The solid 
darkness confronting him drove him mad. So he rose, and 
made a light. He remained seated for a while, staring in front. 
He did not think of Gudrun, he did not think of anything. 

Then suddenly he went downstairs for a book. He had all 


SNOWED UP 533 


his life been in terror of the nights that should come, when he 
could not sleep. He knew that this would be too much for 
him, to have to face nights of sleeplessness and of horrified 
watching the hours. 

So he sat for hours in bed, like a statue, reading. His mind, 
hard and acute, read on rapidly, his body understood nothing. 
In a state of rigid unconsciousness, he read on through the 
night, till morning, when, weary and disgusted in spirit, dis- 
gusted most of all with himself, he slept for two hours. 

Then he got up, hard and full of energy. Gudrun scarcely 
spoke to him, except at coffee when she said: 

“T shall be leaving to-morrow.” 

“We will go together as far as Innsbruck, for appearance’s 
sake?” he asked. 

“Perhaps,” she said. 

She said “Perhaps” between the sips of her coffee. And the 
sound of her taking her breath in the word, was nauseous to 
him. He rose quickly to be away from her. 

He went and made arrangements for the departure on the 
morrow. Then, taking some food, he set out for the day on 
the skis. Perhaps, he said to the Wirt, he would go up to the 
Marienhiitte, perhaps to the village below. 

To Gudrun this day was full of a promise like spring. She 
felt an approaching release, a new fountain of life rising up in 
her. It gave her pleasure to dawdle through her packing, it 
gave her pleasure to dip into books, to try on her different 
garments, to look at herself in the glass. She felt a new lease 

of life was come upon her, and she was happy like a child, 
very attractive and beautiful to everybody, with her soft, lux- 
uriant figure, and her happiness. Yet underneath was death 
itself. | 

In the afternoon she had to go out with Loerke. Her to-mor- 
row was perfectly vague before her. This was what gave her 
pleasure. She might be going to England with Gerald, she 
might be going to Dresden with Loerke, she might be going 
to Munich, to a girl-friend she had there. Anything might 
come to pass on the morrow. And to-day was the white, 
snowy iridescent threshold of all possibility, All possibility— 


534 WOMEN IN LOVE 


that was the charm to her, the lovely, iridescent, indefinite 
charm,—pure illusion. All possibility—because death was in- 
evitable, and uothing was possible but death. 

She did not want things to materialise, to take any definite 
shape. She wanted, suddenly, at one moment of the journey 
to-morrow, to be wafted into an utterly new course, by some 
utterly unforeseen event, or motion. So that, although she 
wanted to go out with Loerke for the last time into the snow, 
she did not want to be serious or business-like. 

And Loerke was not a serious figure. In his brown velvet 
cap, that made his head as round as a chestnut, with the 
brown-velvet flaps loose and wild over his ears, and a wisp of 
elf-like, thin black hair blowing above his full, elf-like dark 
eyes, the shiny, transparent brown skin crinkling up into odd 
grimaces on his small-featured face, he looked an odd little 
boy-man, a bat. But in his figure, in the greeny loden suit, 
he looked ché#if and puny, still strangely different from the 
rest. 

He had taken a little toboggan, for the two of them, and 
they trudged between the blinding slopes of snow, that burned 
their now hardening faces, laughing in an endless sequence of 
quips and jests and polyglot fancies. The fancies were the 
reality to both of them, they were both so happy, tossing about 
the little coloured balls of verbal humour and whimsicality. 
Their natures seemed to sparkle in full interplay, they were 
enjoying a pure game. And they wanted to keep it on the 
level of a game, their relationship: such a fine game. 

Loerke did not take the tobogganning very seriously. He 
put no fire and intensity into it, as Gerald did. Which pleased 
Gudrun. She was weary, oh so weary of Gerald’s gripped in- 
tensity of physical motion. Loerke let the sledge go wildly, 
and gaily; like a flying leaf, and when, at a bend, he pitched 
both her and him out into the snow, he only waited for them 
both to pick themselves up unhurt off the keen white ground, 
to be laughing and pert as a pixie. She knew he would be 
making ironical, playful remarks as he wandered in hell—if 
he were in the humour. And that pleased her immensely. It 


SNOWED UP 535 


seemed like a rising above the dreariness of actuality, the mo- 
notony of contingencies. 

They played till the sun went down, in pure amusement, 
careless and timeless. Then, as the little sledge twirled riskily 
to rest at the bottom of the slope: 

“Wait!” he said suddenly, and he produced from somewhere 
a large thermos flask, a packet of Keks, and a bottle of 
Schnapps. | 

“Oh Loerke,” she cried. “What an inspiration! What a 
comble de joie indeed! What is the Schnapps?” 

He looked at it, and laughed. 

“Fleidelbeer!”’ he said. 

“No! From the bilberries under the snow. Doesn’t it look 
as if it were distilled from snow. Can you—” she sniffed, and 
sniffed at the bottle—‘‘can you smell bilberries? Isn’t it won- 
derful? It is exactly as if one could smell them through the 
snow.” 

She stamped her foot lightly on the ground. He kneeled 
down and whistled, and put his ear to the snow. As he did 
so his black eyes twinkled up. 

“Ha! Ha!” she laughed, warmed by the whimsical way in 
which he mocked at her verbal extravagances. He was always 
teasing her, mocking her ways. But as he in his mockery was 
even more absurd than she in her extravagancies, what could 
one do but laugh and feel liberated. 

She could feel their voices, hers and his, ringing silvery like 
bells in the frozen, motionless air of the first twilight. How 
perfect it was, how very perfect it was, this silvery isolation 
and interplay. 

She sipped the hot coffee, whose fragrance flew around them 
like bees.murmuring around flowers, in the snowy air, she 
drank tiny sips of the Heidelbeerwasser, she ate the cold, sweet, 
creamy wafers. How good everything was! How perfect 
everything tasted and smelled and sounded, here in this utter 
stillness of snow and falling twilight. 

“You are going away to-morrow?” his voice came at last. 

“Ves,” 

There was a pause, when the evening seemed to rise in its 


536 WOMEN IN LOVE 


silent, ringing pallor infinitely high, to the infinite which was 
near at hand. 

“Wohin?” 

That was the question—wohin? Whither? Wohin? - What 
a lovely word! She never wanted it answered. Let it chime 
for ever. 

“T don’t know,” she said, smiling at him. 

He caught the smile from her. 

“One never does,” he said. 

“One never does,” she repeated. 

There was a silence, wherein he ate biscuits rapidly, as a 
rabbit eats leaves. 

“But,” he laughed, “‘where will you take a ticket to?” 

“Oh heaven!” she cried. “One must take a ticket.” 

Here was a blow. She saw herself at the wicket, at the rail- 
way station. Then a relieving thought came to her. She 
breathed freely. 

“But one needn’t go,” she cried. 

“Certainly not,” he said. 

“T mean one needn’t go where one’s ticket says.” 

That struck him. One might take a ticket, so as not to 
travel to the destination it indicated. One might break off, 
and avoid the destination. A point located. That was an 
idea! 

“Then take a ticket to London,” he said. ‘One should never 
go there.” 

“Right,” she answered. 

He poured a little coffee into a tin can. 

“You won’t tell me where you will go?” he asked. 

“Really and truly,” she said, “I don’t know. It depends 
which way the wind blows.” 

He looked at her quizzically, then he pursed up his lips, like 
Zephyrus, blowing across the snow. 

“It goes towards Germany,” he said. 

“T believe so,” she laughed. 

Suddenly, they were aware of a vague white figure near 
them. It was Gerald. Gudrun’s heart leapt in sudden terror, 
profound terror. She rose to her feet. 


SNOWED UP (539 


“They told me where you were,” came Gerald’s voice, like a 
judgment in the whitish air of twilight. 

“Mariaf You come like a ghost,” exclaimed Loerke. 

Gerald did not answer. His presence was unnatural and 
_ ghostly to them. 

Loerke shook the flask—then he held it inverted over the 
snow. Only a few brown drops trickled out. 

“All gone!” he said. 

To Gerald, the smallish, odd figure of the German was dis- 
tinct and objective, as if seen through field glasses. And he 
disliked the small figure exceedingly, he wanted it removed. 

Then Loerke rattled the box which held the biscuits. 

“Biscuits there are still,” he said. 

And reaching from his seated posture in the sledge, he 
handed them to Gudrun. She fumbled, and took one. He 
would have held them to Gerald, but Gerald so definitely did 
not want to be offered a biscuit, that Loerke, rather vaguely, 
put the box aside. Then he took up the small bottle, and held 
it to the light. 

“Also there is some Schnapps,” he said to himself. 

Then suddenly, he elevated the bottle gallantly in the air, 
a strange grotesque figure leaning towards Gudrun, and said: 
“Gnadiges Fraulein,” he said, “wohl—” 

There was a crack, the bottle was flying, Loerke had started 
back, the three stood quivering in violent emotion. 

Loerke turned to Gerald, a devilish leer on his bright-skinned 
face. 

“Well done!” he said, in a satirical demoniac frenzy. “C’est 
le sport, sans doute.” 

The next instant he was sitting ludicrously in the snow, 
Gerald’s fist having rung against the side of his head. But 
‘Loerke pulled himself together, rose, quivering, looking full at 
Gerald, his body weak and furtive, but his eyes demoniacal 
with satire. 

“Vive le heros, vive—” 

But he flinched, as, in a black flash Gerald’s fist came upon 
him, banged into the other side of his head, and sent him aside 
dike a broken straw. 


538 WOMEN IN LOVE 


But Gudrun moved forward. She raised her clenched hand 
high, and brought it down, with a great downward stroke on 
to the face and on to the breast of Gerald. 

A great astonishment burst upon him, as if the air had 
broken. Wide, wide his soul opened, in wonder, feeling the 
pain. Then it laughed, turning, with strong hands outstretched, 
at last to take the apple of his desire. At last he could finish 
his desire. 

He took the throat of Gudrun between his hands, that were 
hard and indomitably powerful. And her throat was beau- 
tifully, so beautifully soft, save that, within, he could feel the 
slippery chords of her life. And this he crushed, this he could 
crush. What bliss! Oh what bliss, at last; what satisfaction, 
at last! The pure zest of satisfaction filled his soul. He was 
watching the unconsciousness come into her swollen face, 
watching the eyes roll back. How ugly she was! What a ful- 
filment, what a satisfaction! How good this was, oh how 
good it was, what a God-given gratification, at last! He was 
unconscious of her fighting and struggling. The struggling 
was her reciprocal lustful passion in this embrace, the more 
violent it became, the greater the frenzy of delight, till the 
zenith was reached, the crisis, the struggle was overborne, her 
movement became softer. appeased. 

Loerke roused himself on the snow, too dazed and hurt to 
get up. Only his eyes were conscious. 

“Monsieur,” he said, in his thin, roused voice: “Quand vous 
aurez fini—” 

A revulsion of contempt and disgust came over Gerald’s 
soul. The disgust went to the very bottom of him, a nausea. 
Ah, what was he doing, to what depths was he letting himself 
go! As if he cared about her enough to kill her, to have her 
life on his hands! 

A weakness ran over his body, a terrible relaxing, a thaw, a 
decay of strength. Without knowing, he had let go his grip, 
and Gudrun had fallen to her knees. Must he see, must he 
know? 

A fearful weakness possessed him, his joints were turned to 


ee 


SNOWED UP 539 


water. He drifted, as on a wind, veered, and went drifting 
away. 

“I didn’t want it, really,” was the last confession of disgust 
in his soul, as he drifted up the slope, weak, finished, only 
sheering off unconsciously from any further contact. “I’ve 
had enough—I want to go to sleep. I’ve had enough.” He 
was sunk under a sense of nausea. 

He was weak, but he did not want to rest, he wanted to go 
on and on, to the end. Never again to stay, till he came to 
the end, that was all the desire that remained to him. So he 
drifted on and on, unconscious and weak, not thinking of any- 
thing, so long as he could keep in action. 

The twilight spread a weird, unearthly light overhead, blu- 
ish-rose in colour, the cold blue night sank on the snow. In 
the valley below, behind, in the great bed of snow, were two 
small figures: Gudrun dropped on her knees, like one executed, 
and Loerke sitting propped up near her. ‘That was all. 

Gerald stumbled on up the slope of snow, in the bluish 
darkness, always climbing, always unconsciously climbing, 
weary though he was. On his left was a steep slope with black 
rocks and fallen masses of rock and veins of snow slashing in 
and about the blackness of rock, veins of snow slashing | 
vaguely in and about the blackness of rock. Yet there was no 
sound, all this made no noise. 

To add to his difficulty, a small bright moon shone bril- 
liantly just ahead, on the right, a painful brilliant thing that 
was always there, unremitting, from which there was no escape. 
He wanted so to come to the end—he had had enough. Yet 
he did not sleep. 

He surged painfully up, sometimes having to cross a slope 
of black rock, that was blown bare of snow. Here he was 
afraid of falling, very much afraid of falling. And high up 
here, on the crest, moved a wind that almost overpowered 
him with a sleep-heavy iciness. Only it was not here, the 
end, and he must still go on. His indefinite nausea would not 
let him stay. 

Having gained one ridge, he saw the vague shadow of some- 
thing higher in front. Always higher, always higher. He 


540 WOMEN IN LOVE 


knew he was following the track towards the summit of the 
slopes, where was the Marienhiitte, and the descent on the other 
side. But he was not really conscious. He only wanted to go 
on, to go on whilst he could, to move, to keep going, that was 
all, to keep going, until it was finished. He had lost all his 
sense of place. And yet in the remaining instinct of life, his 
feet sought the track where the skis had gone. 

He slithered down a sheer snowslope. That frightened him. 
He had no Alpenstock, nothing. But having come safely to 
rest, he began to walk on, in the illuminated darkness. It was 
as cold as sleep. He was between two ridges, in a hollow. So 
he swerved. Should he climb the other ridge, or wander along 
the hollow? How frail the thread of his being was stretched! 
He would perhaps climb the ridge. The snow was firm and 
simple. He went along. There was something standing out 
of the snow. He approached, with dimmest curiosity. 

It was a half-buried Crucifix, a little Christ under a little 
sloping hood, at the top of a pole. He sheered away. Some- 
body was going to murder him. He had a great dread of be- 
ing murdered. But it was a dread which stood outside him, 
like his own ghost. 

Yet why be afraid? It was bound to happen. To be mur- 
dered! He looked round in terror at the snow, the rocking, 
pale, shadowy slopes of the upper world. He was bound to 
be murdered, he could see it. This was the moment when the 
death was uplifted, and there was no escape. 

Lord Jesus, was it then bound to be—Lord Jesus! He could 
feel the blow descending, he knew he was murdered. Vaguely 
wandering forward, his hands lifted as if to feel what would 
happen, he was waiting for the moment when he would stop, 
when it would cease. It was not over yet. 

He had come to the hollow basing of snow, surrounded by 
sheer slopes and precipices, out of which rose a track that 
brought one to the top of the mountain. But he wandered un- 
consciously, till he slipped and fell down, and as he fell some- 
thing broke in his soul, and immediately he went to sleep. 


CHAPTER XXXI 
EXEUNT 


WHEN they brought the body home, the next morning, Gud- 
run was shut up in her room. From her window she saw men 
coming along with a burden, over the snow. She sat still and 
let the minutes go by. 

There came a tap at her door. She opened. There stood a 
woman, saying softly, oh, far too reverently: 

“They have found him, madam!” 

“Tl est mort?” 

“VYes—hours ago.” 

Gudrun did not know what to say. What should she say? 
What should she feel? What should she do? What did they 
expect of her? She was coldly at a loss. 

“Thank you,” she said, and she shut the door of her room. 
The woman went away mortified. Not a word, not a tear—ha! 
Gudrun was cold, a cold woman. 

Gudrun sat on in her room, her face pale and impassive. 
What was she to do? She could not weep and make a scene. 
She could not alter herself. She sat motionless, hiding from peo- 
ple. Her one motive was to avoid actual contact with events. 
She only wrote out a long telegram to Ursula and Birkin. 

In the afternoon, however, she rose suddenly to look for 
Loerke. She glanced with apprehension at the door of the 
room that had been Gerald’s. Not for worlds would she enter 
there. 

She found Loerke sitting alone in the lounge. She went 
Straight up to him. 

“Tt isn’t true, is it?” she said. 

He looked up at her. A small smile of misery twisted his 
face. He shrugged his shoulders. 

“True?” he echoed. 

541 


542 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“We haven’t killed him?” she asked. 

He disliked her coming to him in such a manner. He raised 
his shoulders wearily. 

“Tt has happened,” he said. 

She looked at him. He sat crushed and frustrated for the 
time being, quite as emotionless and barren as herself. My 
God! this was a barren tragedy, barren, barren. 

She returned to her room to wait for Ursula and Birkin. 
She wanted to get away, only to get away. She could not 
think or feel until she had got away, till she was loosed from 
this position. 

The day passed, the next day came. She heard the sledge, 
saw Ursula and Birkin alight, and she shrank from these also. 

Ursula came straight up to her. 

“Gudrun!” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. 
And she took her sister in her arms. Gudrun hid her face on 
Ursula’s shoulder, but still she could not escape the cold devil 
of irony that froze her soul. 

“Ha, ha!” she thought, “this is the right behaviour.” 

But she could not weep, and the sight of her cold, pale, im- 
passive face soon stopped the fountain of Ursula’s tears. In 
a few moments, the sisters had nothing to say to each other. 

“Was it very vile to be dragged back here again?” Gudrun 
asked at length. 

Ursula looked up in some bewilderment. 

“T never thought of it,” she said. 

“T felt a beast, fetching you,” said Gudrun. “But I simply 
couldn’t see people. That is too much for me.” 

“Yes,” said Ursula, chilled. 

Birkin tapped and entered. His face was white and expres- 
sionless. She knew he knew. He gave her his hand, saying: 

“The end of tis trip, at any rate.” 

Gudrun glanced at him, afraid. 

There was silence between the three of them, nothing to be 
said. At length Ursula asked in a small voice: 

“Fave you seen him?” 

He looked back at Ursula with a hard, cold look, and did 
not trouble to answer. 

/ 


EXEUNT 543 


“lave you seen him?’ she repeated. 

“T have,” he said, coldly. 

Then he looked at Gudrun, 

“Have you done anything?” he said. 

“Nothing,” she replied, “nothing.” 

She shrank in cold disgust from making any statement. 

“Loerke says that Gerald came to you, when you were sit- 
ting on the sledge at the bottom of the Rudelbahn, that you 
had words, and Gerald walked away. What were the words 
about? I had better know, so that I can satisfy the authorities, 
if necessary.” 

Gudrun looked up at him, white, childlike, mute with 
trouble. 

“There weren’t even any words,” she said. “He knocked 
Loerke down and stunned him, he half strangled me, then he 
went away.” 

To herself she was saying: 

“A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!”” And she 
turned ironically away, because she knew that the fight had 
been between Gerald and herself and that the presence of the 
third party was a mere contingency—an inevitable contingency 
perhaps, but a contingency none the less. But let them have 
it as an example of the eternal triangle, the trinity of hate. It 
would be simpler for them. 

Birkin went away, his manner cold and abstracted. But she 
knew he would do things for her, nevertheless, he would see 
her through. She smiled slightly to herself, with contempt. 
Let him do the work, since he was so extremely good at look- 
ing after other people. 

Birkin went again to Gerald. He had loved him. And yet 
he felt chiefly disgust at the inert body lying there. It was so 
inert, so coldly dead, a carcass, Birkin’s bowels seemed to turn 
to ice. He had to stand and look at the frozen dead body that 
had been Gerald. 

It was a frozen carcass of a dead male. Birkin remembered 
a rabbit which he had once found frozen like a board on the 
snow. It had been rigid like a dried board when he picked it 
up. And now this was Gerald, stiff as a board, curled up as 


544 WOMEN IN LOVE 


if for sleep, yet with the horrible hardness somehow evident. 
It filled him with horror. The room must be made warm, the 
body must be thawed. The limbs would break like glass or 
like wood if they had to be straightened. 

He reached and touched the dead face. And the sharp, 
heavy bruise of ice bruised his living bowels. He wondered 
if he himself were freezing too, freezing from the inside. In 
the short blond moustache the life-breath was frozen into a 
block of ice, beneath the silent nostrils. And this was Gerald! 

Again he touched the sharp, almost glittering fair hair of 
the frozen body. It was icy-cold, hair icy-cold, almost ven- 
omous. Birkin’s heart began to freeze. He had loved Gerald. 
Now he looked at the shapely, strange-coloured face, with 
the small, fine, pinched nose and the manly cheeks, saw it 
frozen like an ice-pebble—yet he had loved it. What 
was one to think or feel? His brain was beginning to 
freeze, his blood was turning to ice-water. So cold, so cold, 
a heavy, bruising cold pressing on his arms from outside, 
and a heavier cold congealing within him, in his heart and 
in his bowels. 

He went over the snow slopes, to see where the death had 
been. At last he came to the great shallow among the 
precipices and slopes, near the summit of the pass. It was a 
grey day, the third day of greyness and stillness. All was 
white, icy, pallid, save for the scoring of black rocks that 
jutted like roots sometimes, and sometimes were in naked 
faces. In the distance a slope sheered down from a peak, with .- 
many black rock-slides. 

It was like a shallow pot Wits among the stone and snow 
of the upper world. In this pot Gerald had gone to sleep. 
At the far end, the guides had driven iron stakes deep into 
the snow-wall, so that, by means of the great rope attached, 
they could haul themselves up the massive snow-front, out on 
to the jagged summit of the pass, naked to heaven, where the 
Marienhiitte hid among the naked rocks. Round about, 
spiked, slashed snow-peaks pricked the heaven. 

Gerald might have found this rope. He might have hauled 
himself up to the crest. He might have heard the dogs in the 


EXEUNT 545 


Marienhiitte, and found shelter. He might have gone on, 
down the steep, steep fall of the south-side, down into the dark 
valley with its pines, on to the great Imperial road leading 
south to Italy. 

He might! And what then? The Imperial road! The 
south? Italy? What then? Was it a way out? It was only 
a way in again. Birkin stood high in the painful air, looking 
at the peaks, and the way south. Was it any good going south, 
to Italy? Down the old, old Imperial road? 

He turned away. Either the heart would break, or cease 
to care. Best cease to care. Whatever the mystery which 
has brought forth man and the universe, it is a non-human 
mystery, it has its own great ends, man is not the criterion. 
Best leave it all to the vast, creative, non-human mystery. 
Best strive with oneself only, not with the universe. 

“God cannot do without man.” It was a saying of some 
great French religious teacher. But surely this is false. God 
can do without man. God could do without the ichthyosauri 
and the mastodon. These monsters failed creatively to de- 
velop, so God, the creative mystery, dispensed with them. In 
the same way the mystery could dispense with man, should 
he too fail creatively to change and develop. The eternal crea- 
tive mystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a 
finer created being. Just as the horse has taken the place of 
the mastodon. 

It was very consoling to Birkin, to think this. If humanity 
ran into a cul de sac, and expended itself, the timeless creative 
mystery would bring forth some other being, finer, more won- 
derful, some new more lovely race, to carry on the embodiment 
of creation. The game was never up. The mystery of crea- 
tion was fathomless, infallible, inexhaustible, forever. Races 
came and went, species passed away, but ever new species arose, 
more lovely, or equally lovely, always surpassing wonder. The 
fountain-head was incorruptible and unsearchable. It had no 
limits. It could bring forth miracles, create utter new races 
and new species, in its own hour, new forms of consciousness, 
new forms of body, new units of being. To be man was as 
nothing compared to the possibilities of the creative mystery. 


546 WOMEN IN LOVE 


To have one’s pulse beating direct from the mystery, this was 
perfection, unutterable satisfaction. Human or inhuman mat- 
tered nothing. The perfect pulse throbbed with indescribable 
being, miraculous unborn species. 

Birkin went home again to Gerald. He went into the room, 
and sat down on the bed. Dead, dead and cold! 


“Imperial Cesar dead, and turned to clay 
Would stop a hole to keep the wind away.” 


There was no response from that which had been Gerald. 
Strange, congealed, icy substance—no more. No more! 

Terribly weary, Birkin went away, about the day’s business. 
- He did it all quietly, without bother. To rant, to rave, to be 
tragic, to make situations—it was all too late. Best be quiet, 
and bear one’s soul in patience and in fulness. 

But when he went in again, at evening, to look at Gerald 
between the candles, because of his heart’s hunger, suddenly 
his heart contracted, his own candle all but fell from his hand, 
as, with a strange whimpering cry, the tears broke out. He sat 
down in a chair, shaken by a sudden access. Ursula who had 
followed him, recoiled aghast from him, as he sat with sunken 
head and body convulsively shaken, making a strange, horrible 
sound of tears. 

“T didn’t want it to be like this—I didn’t want it to be like 
this,” he cried to himself. Ursula could not but think of the 
Kaiser’s: “Ich habe as nicht gewollt.” She looked almost with 
horror on Birkin. 

Suddenly he was silent. But he sat with his head dropped, 
to hide his face. Then furtively he wiped his face with his 
fingers. Then suddenly he lifted his head, and looked straight 
at Ursula, with dark, almost vengeful eyes. 

“He should have loved me,” he said. “I offered him.” 

She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered: 

“What difference would it have made!” 


“Tt would!” he said. “It would.” 
He forgot her, and turned to look at Gerald. With head 


oddly lifted, like a man who draws his head back from an 


EXEUNT 547 


insult, half haughtily, he watched the cold, mute, material 
face. It had a bluish cast. It sent a shaft like ice through the 
heart of the living man. Cold, mute, material! Birkin re- 
membered how once Gerald had clutched his hand, with a 
Warm, momentaneous grip of final love. For one second— 
then let go again, let go for ever. If he had kept true to that 
clasp, death would not have mattered. Those who die, and 
dying still can love, still believe, do not die. They live still 
in the beloved. Gerald might still have been living in the 
spirit with Birkin, even after death. He might have lived 
with his friend, a further life. 

But now he was dead, like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice. 
Birkin looked at the blue fingers, the inert mass. He remem- 
bered a dead stallion he had seen: a dead mass of maleness, 
repugnant. He remembered also the beautiful face of one 
whom he had loved, and who had died still having the faith to 
yield to the mystery. That dead face was beautiful, no one 
could call it cold, mute, material. No one could remember it 
without gaining faith in the mystery, without the soul’s warm- 
ing with new, deep life-trust. 

And Gerald! ‘The denier! He left the heart cold, frozen, 
hardly able to beat. Gerald’s father had looked wistful, to 
break the heart: but not this last terrible look of cold, mute 
Matter. Birkin watched and watched. 

Ursula stood aside watching the living man stare at the 
frozen face of the dead man. Both faces were unmoved and 
unmoving. The candle-flames flickered in the frozen air, in 
the intense silence. 

‘“Haven’t you seen enough?” she said. 

He got up. 

“Tt’s a bitter thing to me,” he said. 

‘“What—that he’s dead?” she said. 

His eyes just met hers. He did not answer. 

“You've got me,” she said. 

He smiled and kissed her. 

“Tf J die,” he said, “you'll know I haven’t left you.” 

“And me?” she cried. 


548 WOMEN IN LOVE 


“And you won’t have left me,” he said. ‘We shan’t have 
any need to despair, in death.” 

She took hold of his hand. 

“But need you despair over Gerald?” she said. 

“Yes,” he answered. 

They went away. Gerald was taken to England, to be 
buried. Birkin and Ursula accompanied the body, along with 
one of Gerald’s brothers. It was the Crich brothers and sis- 
ters who insisted on the burial in England. Birkin wanted to 
leave the dead man in the Alps, near the snow. But the family 
was strident, loudly insistent. 

Gudrun went to Dresden. She wrote no particulars of her- 
self. Ursula stayed at the Mill with Birkin for a week or two. 
They were both very quiet. 

“Did you need Gerald?” she asked one evening. 

“Yes,” he said. 

“Aren’t I enough for you?” she asked. 

“No,” he said. “You are enough for me, as far as a woman 
is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man 
friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.” 

“Why aren’t I enough?” she said. “You are enough for 
me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the 
same with you?” 

“Having you, I can live alt my life without anybody else, 
any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really 
happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of 
love,” he said. 

“T don’t believe it,” she said. “It’s an obstinacy, a theory, 
a perversity.” 

“Well—” he said. 

“You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!” 

“Tt seems as if I can’t,” he said. “Yet I wanted it.” 

“You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,” she said. 

“T don’t believe that, ” he answered. 


THE END 


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